So Bev has set a challenge.  About time?  Time wasted, time to go, just in time – where to begin?  I’ll consider this in my own good time, as time becomes available and then set aside time to work on this project.
 
I ponder on next time, about time and time waits for no man.  Where to begin…Once upon a time…, As time went by, she checked her watch…, There was a time in his life when …, or even, Sarah will never forget the time….
 
Then this morning, I realised I had run out of time to write about time!
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Noelle
May 2019

“I have to do an assignment Nana, can you tell me about the time in your life, when you were my age”? my 13 year old granddaughter asked.
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As I thought of their powerbill in their centrally heated  all electric home, my mind went back to the warmth experienced in my home when I was of a similar age.

I explained to Emma that the area where our family lived was very cold.  Even in the summer time the temperature was rarely above twenty five degrees, yet we were always well prepared for the cold winter months.  The old corrugated shed in the backyard would hold a plentiful supply of wood to fuel the kitchen stove and the open fire place.  It was my brother who was responsible for splitting the wood into smaller pieces or kindling and keeping the woodbox inside the house full, providing enough wood for the next day and night.

The cast iron stove in the kitchen was kept alight all day, not only providing a lovely warm kitchen but a constant means of cooking.  A kettle sat on the hob, always on the boil and the oven temperature was tested by feeling its door knob.  Too hot to touch meant temperature ideal for cooking scones, medium heat suitable for cakes or a roast, just warm ideal for the cooking of a pavlova.  As the temperature and fire decreased following the evening meal, damp clothing would often be draped around the stove to air.  At night a fire would be lit in the dining room and the family would enjoy an evening in the room, warm and cosy despite the bitter temperatures outside.

With old newspaper screwed up tightly and kinding atop, the fire would be ready to light.  My dad would often throw some kero on the pile and then light a match to ignite the paper.  Whoosh, the flames would leap straight up the chimney and many times cause the inside of the chimney to catch fire, causing some consternation.  Heavier pieces of wood would be quickly added to the fire which would settle to crackle away cheerfully, bright embers glowing like burnished gold; then time spent gazing, mesmerised whilst prodding the ever changing embers with the old iron poker.

It was so warm in this room - doors would be closed as we pursued our different interests safe and in the comfort of home and family.  I would be keen to listen to a radio play transmitted from the brown Bakelite AWA wireless, a pile of comics and Enid Blyton stories stacked up beside me.  Mum would sit in her chair knitting, darning socks or doing fancy work with Semco cottons.  Dad would be happy in his chair with a Craven A cigarette and the latest copy of the Herald newspaper, often creating general discussion with all present.  Siblings would play cards or board games or attend to homework.  There was always a cast iron kettle sitting in the fireplace ready to provide hot water for a night cap of hot cocoa; late in the night we would sometimes, with the use of a long handled wire fork, cook toast on the glowing embers.

At bed time as children we would often undress into night clothes beside the fire, our rubber hot water bottles would be filled and then a dash out into the cold bedrooms before snuggling into our beds. 

“That sounds lovely, Nana,” said Emma as she reverted to playing with her electronic device.
 
Jenny McKenna,
May 2019

Time is with us from the beginning of life.  Clocks make it easier for us to keep tabs on it, though some of us choose to ignore them, but we are a servant to time and we can't exist without it.

Imagine an orb that varies in size for every individual.  We don't know how big it is as it cannot be seen, but we do know that from our beginning it starts slowly rotating and that as it turns it sheds particles from the surface. 

What we do with those particles has a bearing on our lives.  For example, we may just ignore them or we may do something constructive with them, work with them, learn from them, have fun with them or share them with friends or family.  But we use them in some way. 

Sometimes the particles that come away are very sharp and we must be careful how we handle them as they could cause us harm physically or emotionally. 

Some contain pain and grief, but even these if handled and managed the right way can be stored away safely in our head and heart as memories. 

​As the orb of time turns we gain experience and grow used to expecting the unexpected. 

The thing to remember is that time waits for no one, and it certainly doesn't stand still. 

​When I was a child, twelve months was like an eternity.  Christmas and school holidays seemed an age away.  Time seemed to move very slowly then, but as I grew older there was so much happening and time seemed to fly; but of course we know that this isn't the case.  But we do know that with each rotation of time that orb gets smaller until it has worn away to nothing and it has shed its last particle.

That is when our time is up, or our time has run out.  It is time to go, so don't waste time.  Do something before it passes by as one day it will all be gone.

Thank you for sharing the time to listen.  I hope I haven't wasted a particle of your time.  


Neville Gibb
May 2019

Time can be a hard master.  We are governed by time from the moment of conception.  Our foetal development is divided into trimesters and we are expected to meet the recommended targets.  It does not matter that we have no control over our development.  If we tarry too long, we will be forcibly removed.  Now if that is not a hard master, then I don’t know what is.
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Of course, not everyone wants to be a slave to time.  When reaching retirement age, one of the delights to look forward to is not HAVING to get up at a certain time but then find we do get up.  Is that our body clock controlling us just like the business world or our place of employment did?  In retirement, we expect to be free to do as we want.  But are we?  There are medical appointments to attend, public transport to catch.  Even the enjoyable activities come with a sting in their tail.  They are on certain days at a specific time.  Time is so controlling.

My parents, like so many others, loved to welcome the New Year.  It was a sort of ritual.  My siblings and I could seldom stay awake, so we would go to bed.  My mother would waken us shortly before midnight.  We would sit around the fire drowsily watching the clock on the mantelpiece.  My father would have turned on the wireless to the BBC Radio Station and we would all wait patiently for midnight.

Our mantle clock would slowly, slowly tick off the seconds, but it was the chiming of Big Ben that bade farewell to the Old Year and hailed in the New Year.  As the peals of that famous clock rang out over London and through the airwaves to Ireland, it seemed to assure my parents that all was well.  There could be no mistake; it was definitely the New Year.   Then I would thankfully go back to my bed. 

On arising the next morning, it would still be a cold, damp, miserable winter’s day, just the same as before, 31st December.  Nothing had changed.

I still can’t understand why there is such a fuss about welcoming in the New Year.
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Anyway, when is it really New Year’s Day?  Because of daylight saving, people on the Gold Coast have a double bite of the cherry, if it can be called that.  The crowds go across the border to Tweed Heads, NSW, to celebrate the New Year, then return to Coolangatta in Queensland for a second round of celebrating.

There was the Julian calendar, but in 1582 Pope Gregory XII decided he would publish a better one, namely the Gregorian calendar, and so dates changed.  When I was young, we celebrated Christmas Day on the 25 December, but we had another celebration on the 6th January.  We called that one “Little Christmas”.  After that date the Christmas tree and the decorations could be taken down.

The Julian and Gregorian calendars are based on the solar system, but the natural rhythms of our bodies, the oceans and seasons, are controlled by the lunar system.  It wouldn’t suit the business world if our day to day and month to month activities were controlled by the moon – far to changeable!  I expect it would suit them better if Easter occurred at the same time every year.

Our man-made calendars could cause unrest in the world, with people feeling they are being pulled this way or that way, not being sure if they are Arthur or Martha.

Elizabeth Kearns
 
 

What on earth is happening in my brain?  I swear that the days are getting shorter – that time is speeding up.  Why, it seems like only yesterday that I was putting out the bins, not a week ago; last week that I was doing the monthly update of the website, not a month ago; last year that I took those photos, not three years ago. 
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Why is it that I only managed to get out the reminder email for today’s class hours beforehand, when I’d planned to do so all weekend?

I do seem to have a problem with time – my family would say it is probably genetic, as my mother had this problem too.  

However, something new is happening.  I seem to be ‘receiving’ more triggers and experiencing strange and more frequent  ‘déjà vu’ moments.

Recently, for ‘As Time Goes By’, I wrote about a friend becoming pregnant ‘out of wedlock’ during our first year as teachers at a small rural high school near the South Australian border in 1970.  Since sharing this story, I have often found myself back in the sparsely furnished prefabricated flat I lived in opposite the school, remembering the loneliness I felt then, relating it to how I’m feeling now.  With my only geographically close family member on holiday in France at the time, perhaps I felt the sense of distance from family I felt then, perhaps I feel the type of homesickness experienced so deeply then.

Also last month, when a member of the Family History class showed me a family she was seeking to find on ancestry.com, I realised that I had been quite close two of the people she was looking for in the 1970’s.  Looking at an electoral roll on ancestry.com, recognising the address that I had visited so often, suddenly I was visiting my dear friends again.  Searching out photos of the family from my albums to show her at the next class, I found myself transported back to that time, watching ‘video replays’ in my head of ‘times gone by’. 

Memories have also been triggered by people from my childhood reappearing in my life in Benalla through U3A.   Geraldine McCorkell (nee Smith) brings up memories of growing up in Clayton after the war.  I ‘knew of’ Geraldine and my father often spoke of “Morrie Smith”, Geraldine’s father.    Cheryl Turner reminds me of my years and friends at Malvern Girls Secondary School in Melbourne; Pauline Bailey and local artist Ivan Durrant of my ‘matric’ year at Oakleigh High School. 

Memory triggers seem to be coming in from all directions, really – for example, my sister posting photographs of Gaudi’s cathedral in Barcelona last week brought back a stirring of memories of my own visit to Barcelona in 1977, almost half a century ago now. 

Is it part of aging?  Triggers to memories do seem to be occurring more often, acting like a lens opening up on that time in my life.   The vividness of the memories evoked is sharp, the contexts elaborated to include textures, tones, touch.  

Is something happening in my brain?  Perhaps there a biological function behind all this, a purpose behind losing short term memory but keeping long term memory? 

I am left wondering, not only why so many triggers are ‘being received’, but why the memories evoked are enveloped in déjà vu, ‘aura’ like moments in time?

…Oh, my goodness, I’d better ‘snap out of it’ and ‘get a move on’!  Our next ‘As Time Goes By’ session is only hours away! 
 
Once again, my sense of time is awry; once again I haven’t  kneaded and edited my story to 500 words as I should have!

Once again…. I’m… ‘just in time’…
 
Beverley Lee