Time just slips away...

 It's Time to Talk About Time

So I was reflecting on the fact that we have a minimum 2-3 year stint abroad and how much time that is. It feels like a long, long time.

It isn't.

What really made me realise this was iTunes. Yep that all pervasive, multi-tentacled memory hog of a piece of software had a useful function. Okay, I exaggerate my disdain for iTunes, I don't mind it really, it's just a bit, well Apple-ish. In other words it constantly wants to do things its way and hogs more system resources than is reasonable, but frankly I don't really care as it does the job I need it to and doesn't bother me as frequently as say Windows updates do.

But back to the topic in hand - time.

I was looking back at some of the music I could swear I've only just bought and started listening to. Some of it was five years old, but I was sure they'd appear in the recently added tab of my library.

There's no way theses are all from 2016 - I could swear I've only just added these. I can't have been listening to them for five years???

Time has become fluid - lockdowns, children (mine and other people's), the turning of the academic years, people moving in and out of my life - all of these things have contributed to a blurring of the lines between one time period and the next. 

Recently time has moved both so slowly as to be stultifying and so rapidly that I can't keep track of what happened when. Lockdown in particular has magnified this as both nothing and everything happened. Work was at first slowed to a weirdly disjointed pace and then accelerated in a way which was terrifying. Whilst outside of work time just dribbled past with limited opportunities to distract ourselves and few options for leisure activities. Thomas's after school activities in particular were reduced to zero and this actually relieved a lot of pressure on our time at the end of the school day. Recently this began to get back to something that seemed more normal, although it was still reduced in comparison to what it had been. This made the last few weeks before leaving rush past at a breakneck pace. We found ourselves once again dashing from school to home and then out to swimming or cricket or whatever else we were doing.

So what is the point of this post? Well there isn't one really. I guess it's more of an observation than anything else.

I suppose the point, if there is one, is that three years out here will pass in a blink of an eye. It seems a drawn out process at the moment as I'm stuck in a hotel room for another 8 days at the time of writing, but that will change.

And that's the point - we need to slow down and appreciate what is going on around us. I've spoken to many people, many times about the fact that the lockdown in the UK forced us to put the brakes on and this was no bad thing.

Northumberland has a lot of sky!

We went out walking in Thrunton Woods (thanks to my friend Rachel for that tip!) for a last adventure as a family with our friend Claire. We did a fair stretch and walked up a fairly steep crag and dropped back down into a little valley with a stream running through it.

The bit Thomas said he enjoyed the most was when we got to a clearing and just lay down on the grass and relaxed, looking at the shapes of clouds as the scudded past on the gentle breeze. We weren't doing anything, just watching the clouds.

Maybe we need to make more time to get together and just watch the clouds.

The view from one of the many crags at the hidden gem that is Thrunton Woods.