I accidentally clicked on the link to my original blog - the one with a bare handful of posts scattered over a couple of years. I read them again. One of them was about how I hadn't posted much. Well, about "time" really, and about perceptions of time. I thought I'd update and rehash it here (and correct some of the more egregious typos.)
I had originally intended it to be a weekly blog of about a thousand words. A thousand words ? Once a week ? About travel ?
Piece of cake. After all I'd done it before - I used to write a newspaper column with exactly that brief. It didn't prove to be as easy as I'd thought it would to get down to it though. Time was the problem, and sometimes nowadays it still is - though my post count on this blog is phenomenal by comparison. There's always something else that has to be done, something with a more urgent command of my time. Back then there was work. I had started a new career ,teaching, a year earlier and I'd never been as happy in a job, but it took my time. Right now there is also work. I'm a lot more experienced now and orders of magnitude faster at finding resources and planning lessons but it still takes time - and this week is Ofsted so recently it's taken even more time. Then there's my other writing. I may be an infrequent attendee at my writers' group now, but I do post on various boards and spend an inordinate amount of time penning poems and travel items, mostly for my own amusement. Then there's my social life. It may not be MUCH of a social life but I really wouldn't like the life of a starving recluse penning his magnum opus in a lonely garret.
Yes time is the problem.
What, I hope you are asking, does all this have to do with travel. Quite a lot actually because if ever there is a circumstance where time becomes a real problem it's on a one week holiday in an interesting place. Now I know that for some people a holiday is a week lying on a beach or getting hammered in a bar but that isn't me. I like to be doing things.
Take the trip I made to Catalonia. I started that trip in Barcelona. I arrived at my hotel at lunch time on Saturday and took the three O'clock train out on Monday. In between I even managed a trip out to Montserrat.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and with its benefit maybe I'd have been better not doing that trip. There was such a long list of things I wanted to do in Barcelona, and in fact I managed to achieve almost none of it. Second on the list was to spend time looking at the Gaudi architecture for which the city is famous. Well I did spend half a morning at Segrada Familia but as for the rest, many of which are even more interesting, I took pictures whenever I walked past but took no time to explore. Number one on my list, I confess, was too important to treat so superficially - the Museo Picasso. It was one of the main reasons for my visit to the city so having whizzed round the cathedral in an hour and a half I spent the rest of the day at this fine gallery. Even so, I was a little rushed as there was the unexpected bonus of an additional exhibition of Picasso caricatures.
That was it for Barcelona though - from a list of a dozen things to see and do, two crossed off. One and a half really.
You see the problem. Time.
On the long trips time takes on a stranger role - though sometimes as tyrannical. When you are stuck somewhere - seven weeks in Ecuador for example - then time ceases to be meaningful in any real sense. You can potter and amble where otherwise you might sprint and stride. You can sit for a day at a sidewalk cafe fending off the postcard vendors and drinking beer. You can lose yourself in Quito's labyrinthine and exhausting old town streets.
Then suddenly you have to move on. There's a fixed time for your bus to be leaving and you have allowed yourself to become settled in the hostel, allowed your rucksack to become unpacked.
Aware of your neglect time gets its own back by making your last sight of the city you are leaving a jumbled profusion of rushing and dashing and panic.
There is a duality to the way time behaves when your plans involve fifteen countries and nine months stretching out around you. In the big picture it seems unimportant. After all what does it matter if you cross into another country tomorrow or in two days time.
If you are stuck for an extra week in Rawalpindi while the officials at the Chinese embassy throw every possible obstacle in the way of the visas you will need next month then so be it. Have a weekend in the mountains, get out of the city and relax.
If you are temporarily stranded in Quito awaiting the arrival of others from your group then catch the bus out to Otovalo, spend a day visiting the cattle market or the huge open market that fills the city streets. Never mind that you have no use for a cow, however cheap, or a bolt of brightly coloured silk that an ox couldn't carry. It doesn't matter because at that level time doesn't matter.
Just keep in the back of your mind though a small clock ticking so that time doesn't jump out from some dark corner one morning and surprise you with a bus or train timetable that says you are leaving in an hour - better get your skates on with the packing.
And now time is against me again. I need to get back to doing some work for the inspection - though I've done most of it already - and ensure that I don't do too miserably if I get observed.
It was my habit in that old blog to finish every entry with a poem. This one was finished with one I wrote when I was about twenty. It wasn’t very good, but, for what it’s worth, here it is again. It’s about time - specifically about Wednesday.
I had originally intended it to be a weekly blog of about a thousand words. A thousand words ? Once a week ? About travel ?
Piece of cake. After all I'd done it before - I used to write a newspaper column with exactly that brief. It didn't prove to be as easy as I'd thought it would to get down to it though. Time was the problem, and sometimes nowadays it still is - though my post count on this blog is phenomenal by comparison. There's always something else that has to be done, something with a more urgent command of my time. Back then there was work. I had started a new career ,teaching, a year earlier and I'd never been as happy in a job, but it took my time. Right now there is also work. I'm a lot more experienced now and orders of magnitude faster at finding resources and planning lessons but it still takes time - and this week is Ofsted so recently it's taken even more time. Then there's my other writing. I may be an infrequent attendee at my writers' group now, but I do post on various boards and spend an inordinate amount of time penning poems and travel items, mostly for my own amusement. Then there's my social life. It may not be MUCH of a social life but I really wouldn't like the life of a starving recluse penning his magnum opus in a lonely garret.
Yes time is the problem.
What, I hope you are asking, does all this have to do with travel. Quite a lot actually because if ever there is a circumstance where time becomes a real problem it's on a one week holiday in an interesting place. Now I know that for some people a holiday is a week lying on a beach or getting hammered in a bar but that isn't me. I like to be doing things.
Take the trip I made to Catalonia. I started that trip in Barcelona. I arrived at my hotel at lunch time on Saturday and took the three O'clock train out on Monday. In between I even managed a trip out to Montserrat.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing and with its benefit maybe I'd have been better not doing that trip. There was such a long list of things I wanted to do in Barcelona, and in fact I managed to achieve almost none of it. Second on the list was to spend time looking at the Gaudi architecture for which the city is famous. Well I did spend half a morning at Segrada Familia but as for the rest, many of which are even more interesting, I took pictures whenever I walked past but took no time to explore. Number one on my list, I confess, was too important to treat so superficially - the Museo Picasso. It was one of the main reasons for my visit to the city so having whizzed round the cathedral in an hour and a half I spent the rest of the day at this fine gallery. Even so, I was a little rushed as there was the unexpected bonus of an additional exhibition of Picasso caricatures.
That was it for Barcelona though - from a list of a dozen things to see and do, two crossed off. One and a half really.
You see the problem. Time.
On the long trips time takes on a stranger role - though sometimes as tyrannical. When you are stuck somewhere - seven weeks in Ecuador for example - then time ceases to be meaningful in any real sense. You can potter and amble where otherwise you might sprint and stride. You can sit for a day at a sidewalk cafe fending off the postcard vendors and drinking beer. You can lose yourself in Quito's labyrinthine and exhausting old town streets.
Then suddenly you have to move on. There's a fixed time for your bus to be leaving and you have allowed yourself to become settled in the hostel, allowed your rucksack to become unpacked.
Aware of your neglect time gets its own back by making your last sight of the city you are leaving a jumbled profusion of rushing and dashing and panic.
There is a duality to the way time behaves when your plans involve fifteen countries and nine months stretching out around you. In the big picture it seems unimportant. After all what does it matter if you cross into another country tomorrow or in two days time.
If you are stuck for an extra week in Rawalpindi while the officials at the Chinese embassy throw every possible obstacle in the way of the visas you will need next month then so be it. Have a weekend in the mountains, get out of the city and relax.
If you are temporarily stranded in Quito awaiting the arrival of others from your group then catch the bus out to Otovalo, spend a day visiting the cattle market or the huge open market that fills the city streets. Never mind that you have no use for a cow, however cheap, or a bolt of brightly coloured silk that an ox couldn't carry. It doesn't matter because at that level time doesn't matter.
Just keep in the back of your mind though a small clock ticking so that time doesn't jump out from some dark corner one morning and surprise you with a bus or train timetable that says you are leaving in an hour - better get your skates on with the packing.
And now time is against me again. I need to get back to doing some work for the inspection - though I've done most of it already - and ensure that I don't do too miserably if I get observed.
It was my habit in that old blog to finish every entry with a poem. This one was finished with one I wrote when I was about twenty. It wasn’t very good, but, for what it’s worth, here it is again. It’s about time - specifically about Wednesday.
Wednesday
Wednesday was a slow day
even by my standards
of self-indulgent indolence.
The painting-by-numbers
regimented routine,
the dull and empty silence
did not vary.
No worrying tremors shook
the waiting seismograph
of my inattention.
No dark, pock-marked sunspots
disturbed my shining face
with apprehension
or made me wary.
I spent the whole morning
solving the crossword clues
folded flat on my desk.
C , four blanks, ION,
"the unkindest cut of all".
A simple clue or simple truth -
Though I’d say both.
In the afternoon I stared
with gaping goldfish mouth
and alligator eyes
at the girl in the black sweater
whose captive bosom bounced
and with every breath and sigh
disturbed my sloth.
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