tick...tick...tick...

Time is, as you may surmise from the title of this post, ticking away. It does that a lot just lately and a conversation in the pub garden last week, as we sat supping in the warm afternoon, made me realise just why it seems to tick by faster for some than others.
It's all down to the markers we use to measure the passage of time. I don't mean the seconds, minutes and hours. They are just the units. I mean the semesters, the annual contracts, the birthdays. They are the things we notice.
There goes another 3,153,600 seconds means nothing much to anybody. It's another year gone since my last Summer contract at Harrow School is far more telling. And one marker makes me think of  the others. I did my first Summer School in 2001. Good grief! That's a lot of time passed by.
As a teacher my time is marked as start of year, half term, Christmas, half term, Easter, half term, end of year, start of Summer contract, end of Summer contract and on and on in an endless march. The days, weeks and months don't actually matter. When I was travelling, I had no regular events to mark the passing time and it didn't feel as if it was passing quickly. Of course once it was over it felt as if it had passed quickly, but that's a different thing entirely.

It all makes me feel old. Not as old as that concert last night did of course, twenty eight years since that band played together, thirty since I last saw them. One of my friends brought his daughter with him. The band split up six years before she was born.

So another year has passed, has it?
Two more days and I'll be back on that Summer contract. I'll be slogging up and down the hills of Harrow, teaching English to teenagers and trying to fill the rest of the time with some kind of activity. The Hill isn't exactly brimming over with entertainment possibilities and this year that ticking clock has been taking its toll. I have developed gout and that has quite a number of implications. For a start it will make that slogging up and down the hills a lot more painful. Worse than that though is that my doctor has made three recommendations, none of which will make the filling of the hours any easier. I can, and have, cut down on the amount of meat I eat. Most of the vegetarian options (and most of the non-vegetarian ones, now I think of it) at Harrow involve mushrooms and I'm allergic to them. There's always the salad bar.
I also have to lose weight. That's a bit harder to do when people give you three very large meals a day. I know I don't HAVE to eat them but willpower is harder when it's all, quite literally, handed to you on a plate. Worst though is the cutting down on alcohol. When I said that the Hill isn't brimming with entertainment possibilities I was praising with faint damnation. What there is, is one pub. My habit of popping down for a quick beer on most evenings, just to pass the time and see who is about, will have to be curtailed. I suppose as I do only have one there would be no harm in having one fruit juice instead - just as well as it takes a stronger stomach than mine to drink orange juice in any quantity.

We shall see. Since I started this post another thirty minutes or so has ticked away. I'll be in Harrow before I know it. And then, just as quickly it will all be over and I'll be back at the start of the new year for my regular job.

tick... tick... tick...