I wish had a scientific mind
but I don’t. I got as far as botany and biology at school, I remember clearly an exercise book with “General Science” written on the cover. But physics, chemistry and their connecting thread mathematics ? Not a hope. Later in life I mourned that I had not studied medicine – until some kindly soul remarked that the way I worked would have been impacted by that discipline and I would have been quite a different person. “Oh, good” I hear you sigh ? Indeed. But it was not to be.
The whole idea about losing an hour and gaining an hour is political and economic
rather than actual. Man can measure time, think of those wonderful stellae in various former famous civilisations, ancient calendars in South America, water clocks, sundials. We measure it and build ideas round it but time is. I just wonder where the lost hour goes.
Is it stuck like a ball at the back of a heavy sofa ? Has it slipped down a crack between two tiles in the bathroom ? (This also raises the idea of the material of a hour – is it squashable, easily folded or rigid ?) Has it rolled outside, and become wedged at the back of that awful old bucket ? Has the hand of a Keeper scooped it up to hold away from mind and vision until whenever it is, and we get it back ?
Do I feel the loss of this hour ?
I have done. But not today. Last night, peacefully assisted by one Flarin and one Paracetamol, plus half a chapter of Margaret Irwin on Elizabeth I, I knocked out the pain in my knee and drifted into sweet sleep, to awaken, look at the clock and alter the time pieces to where we are now.
I went to get the paper but of course, of course – it was late being delivered. And contained the usual slew of misery – I shall not recycle the bits I noticed, I am sure you have your own. Though I laughed out loud at shoes of such surpassing ugliness Widow Twankey must surely have been consulted.
In my family, there were two varieties to mislaying something important – there was “it’s probably in a safe place” –
which meant it was going to be hard to find. Or “it’s under something” which implied that whoever it was, didn’t realised it was important, so covered it up and now we’d have to look where we never expected to look,
on the off chance. The hue and cry and loss of temper which attended either (plus working for various people who thought I should know, and I learned to) helped instil into me putting things – no matter what – where they could be found again. What I also learned was that, just as nobody is irreplaceable, so nobody is infallible. The phone goes, the dog barks, the doorbell rings and your attention is distracted just long enough to mislay whatever it is.
And you don’t just lose the tangible – your keys, your wallet, a coat. You lose time, not because you waste it ( and pleasantly wasted time is a wonderful thing), but because it’s a one way ticket.
Last week in the truly terrible television programming, I watched most of a documentary on Josef Stalin
which began with the best bit – that when felled by a big bad stroke, although various members of staff and family knocked at the door and called to him, he couldn’t reply and nobody dared go in. He had given orders that he was not to be disturbed. File under “be sure your sins will find you out.” I was reminded of Boris Johnson about whom some learned committee is still debating whether he did deceive the House, or if he did, whether he meant to deceive the House, when the finding of any observant person must be that he neither knew nor cared whether he did – which is amorality – no sense of moral responsibility, and evidence of that abounds, in the House and every other place. But remember “don’t care, was made to care …” etc. Time out, quite lost.
Annalog 