Time changes

13 Dec Time changes

It’s confusing how time has disappeared this year. How long it seemed in that first three weeks of lockdown, the three that quickly became twelve. March till June. And then some more. Back then, when I looked ahead, I thought that time would drag as the weeks of confinement stretched out in front of me. Then they turned into months. No end in sight, or at least none that anyone could agree on. But it hasn’t been like that. If anything, time has speeded up.  Like pressing fast forward on the remote control and the little x4 or x8 comes up, or even x16 if you keep on pressing. The scenes speed across the screen getting scooped into the past.  

Maybe it’s an age thing. I remember my grandmother saying, every December as she wrote her Christmas cards to send to her family in America, “I don’t know where this year has gone”. My sister and I would look at each other willing our eyes not to lift involuntarily to the ceiling or a giggle to escape our lips. Such an old-fashioned thing to say; so typical of her. We hardly understood its meaning. A decade or two later, my mother started to say the same thing, more and more as the years went by. As her life slowed down, time speeded up. Ironic really. 

I suppose there’s a lesson there. That I must be careful what I say!!

Anyway, the time thing is odd. Why would all these months of mostly being at home, having very limited social contact and that usually for only about an hour at a time on a zoom call result in time flying by at a snappy allegretto? I’m not sure I have any answers. Except that it’s maybe not what you do with your time in lockdown but more how you feel about the changes it forces on you that makes the time go fast or slow. Sure, I miss seeing friends, giving and receiving hugs, making plans, travelling to Scotland or Spain or wherever; the list goes on. But I feel lucky that I haven’t minded it too much. I’ve enjoyed an emptier diary. I say that with some trepidation. I know others who feel the same. But mostly people don’t.

Lockdown has changed so many of my ways. Now there’s the prospect that we will emerge from this and, sometime next year, be able to feel safe again doing the things we used to do, I’ve been wondering what changes I might hang onto. There are lots of things I haven’t missed. Like town centres and shops. The pictures of queues outside Primark just before midnight when the recent lockdown was eased at the beginning of December reminded me how dismal shopping could be. How it was always so much better in prospect than in reality. The anticipation of finding just the right thing that I’d conjured in my mind’s eye often turned into disappointment, or frustration, or exhaustion. And sometimes a parking ticket too.  Food shopping is perfect online now I’ve got my head around the pitfalls of quantities. So, that will stay. I’d dearly like to stop washing the groceries and return to being slightly less obsessive about cleaning. But I wonder if, maybe, those are quite good habits to keep.

There are definitely things I’ll miss about lockdown. How it’s slowed some things down leaving more time to read. More time to think. Though that’s not always comfortable. I’ve become more intimate with the parks near home. They’ve been my far horizon, my view onto a wider world when the walls of the house have felt too closed in. Every week I’ve walked there at least once and often more. Alone or in company. Certain paths have become familiar, like the warm embrace of an old friend. I feel safe there. I can escape for a while, shake off the anxieties that this strange COVID time has imposed and the uncertainties it brings.

The picture is a favourite stopping place in Home Park. It’s a park that runs from Hampton Court down to Kingston, hiding itself away behind old stone walls between the main road and the Thames towpath. This spot is quiet, especially on damp days like this one. I sit here with a friend. We take out our flasks, pour ourselves a coffee and continue our conversation as we watch the season shift subtly in the shrubs and creatures that live here. A young swan, still with a few of the darker feathers of cygnet-hood nestling among the milky-white, has escaped the family brood and come out exploring. Limp green-amber leaves are clinging onto the willow. The decaying trunk of a tree, full of insect life, no doubt, lies on its side by the water’s edge like the skeleton of a prehistoric beast   We are more than halfway through our walk and our conversation is an hour-and-a-half old. It is also timeless. There are new events to share, new characters, new urgencies, new concerns but the themes are often old ones. There is something about walking together that changes the way you share thoughts and deepens friendship. It’s different from conversations over breakfast, lunch or dinner.  With walking you step out into a different, deeper, more contemplative part of your mind. Pure joy.