Time flies…

Being grandad involves giving the grandkids the only thing they truly want from you: your time, so it seems doubly ironic that this autumnal period of life in which, theoretically, you have more spare time to spend with them coincides with the moment when you become increasingly aware that it is very quickly ticking away. Many people far brainier than I (and I know that doesn’t narrow it down much) have stated that time is a man-made construct, and I would not begin to contest this – mainly because I don’t understand it – but I do know that the passage of time is not. Without it we would not get older, great concerts would not feel too short, worthy films would not seem too long and car journeys would not be filled with a million ‘are we there yet’s. Look into any bathroom mirror: you cannot deny the passage of time.

But time is, as we all know, elastic. See which passes more quickly, an hour with a good book and an even better whisky, or an hour in the dentist’s waiting room with root canal treatment just around the corner. It has the capacity to fly by when we don’t want it to and to really drag its heels when Celine Dion is on the radio.

And time, in a cosmic sense, is distance. Light years are the measurement of distance in space: how far light travels in a year, so if a year did not exist as a measurement of time then, obviously, everything would be in the same place at the same time, and kerboom! we all know the kind of trouble that can lead to. (I can’t help but wonder, space being a vacuum, whether The Big Bang might actually have been little more than a super-sized whisper. I was actually about to say that I am not even certain that sound can be transmitted through a total void, but then I thought of Donald Trump’s voice coming out of J D Vance’s arse…) I mean, whoever thought that it would be a good idea to measure distance in time? (It was that idiot Einstein again, wasn’t it? I already hold him personally responsible for everything I don’t understand.) It’s like taking my waist measurement in MPH – actually, given the way it is spreading, not such a bad idea. Mind you, if time and distance are the same thing then one cannot exist without the other: no time, no space – which puts us in a whole heap of trouble if my understanding of astrophysics is anything like solid (thankfully, it isn’t).

When you are young, you have so much time available to you that wasting a little bit of it really doesn’t matter, yet for a child it drags its feet over everything. A journey may take no more than an hour, but an hour takes forever. The distance between meals stretches out into eternity which explains why children are always hungry, but not why they won’t eat anything green. At my age a year can fly by without even a pause for thought between birthday cakes: a week in the blink of an eye. Remembering when things occurred becomes more difficult, not because of encroaching senility but because, as time rushes towards the finishing line, the spaces between things begin to compress. (Time, of course, does end for everyone and everything except, perhaps, for ‘The Archers’.) Life is a Slinky; time is the stairs.

I remember being a child – or, more correctly, my memory being about as reliable as that of an errant politician, the spirit of being a child (aided in this, my wife would argue, by the fact that I am in many respects still a child) and what I recall most clearly is the sensation of constantly waiting for something to happen. Life was never in the present, it was always about waiting for what was to come next. I am now at an age when I steadfastly try to ignore much of what lies in the future. I am stuck in the present and – increasingly so – the past. The future – although I would like to live as much of it as possible – is far too uncertain to consider. There is a certain comfort in the past: I know that I have survived it.

It is a simple fact that I have left far more time behind me than lays ahead, and what I have is passing with an unseemly haste. Time flies, but it is a twin-edged sword (courtesy of mixedmetaphores.com). I am a grandad and, eventually I might be a great-grandad. I do not want to be that old, but I do not want to miss out on whatever joy being that age might bring me. Making time for great-grandkids may not prove to be the easiest thing on earth – what with the carers to consider – but I’m definitely up for the chance to give it a go. Time might be ticking, but you can slow it down if you refuse to look…

The Common Language

Despite the fact that many of us assembled here share a ‘common language’, I thought that it might be interesting to actually take a look at some of the everyday words we do not share. I am sure I will have touched on one or two of these before (WordPress will find me out!) but I started to think about it now because it is Fall for a number of my readers whilst, here in England, it is Autumn. Now, I know that Autumn must be the oldest of these words – it is English dammit! – but Fall is definitely more literal. So where does Autumn come from? Well, as large chunks of our language do, it comes from a word left behind by The Romans when they buggered off to somewhere warmer, autumnus, meaning, well… autumn. Except I also learned that following the departure of the Romans from our shores, through to the sixteenth century, autumn was actually known as harvest and, more confusingly did, from that time, begin to be called fall. All to do with the fall of leaves I presume. No doubt we went back to the good ole Latin as soon as we discovered that you guys had adopted fall – we’re not a nation to hold grudges, after all.

So, let us continue for now with our shared differences with the U.S. Films (ok, movies) and TV have made sure that we are completely familiar with your interpretation of the language, but the fact that you insist on calling trousers, pants, always causes us to pause because, as anyone knows, pants is, in fact, the generic term for underwear, of which boxers are just one option. (For the under-forties only: beyond that age a completely different level of support is required.) We know (and to some extent accept) that you have sneakers while we have trainers; you have a fanny while we have a bottom and you have a coochie while we have a fanny; you have diapers instead of nappies, bills instead of notes and faucets instead of taps, but restroom for public toilets always raises eyebrows: anybody trying to rest in a public loo over here faces the prospect of an extremely rude awakening!

And you enter buildings on the First Floor, whilst we enter on the Ground Floor. Over here, the first floor is the second floor, and requires a ladder. Anyone leaving a British building from the first floor will find the step exceedingly steep. Equally sidewalk is a very literal use of the language, whereas we use a pavement (from the Latin pavimentum, which means “trodden down floor.” Trodden down because it’s for pedestrians and not vehicles!) Here sidewalk is something people do after a gin or two too many. Most odd for me is the discovery that in the US a car’s silencer is known as a muffler. Here, a muffler is a scarf, and it now makes me realise that ‘having a muffler wrapped around one’s neck’ is something that, in America, would only be carried out by the Mafia.

Of course, we also have many different names for foodstuffs: eggplant (aubergine), scallion (spring onion), zucchini (courgette), chips (crisps), French Fries (chips) and single portion (an entire family meal).

Which culinary reference brings me on to our Australian friends who employ, without question, the very best use of the English language – generally by abbreviating all nouns and sticking ‘ie’ on the end – but you do have Shrimps which, to us, are some kind of mutant Jurassic-sized prawns. Shrimps, here, are the size of woodlice – if you put them on a barbecue they would definitely fall through. Here, a shrimp of sufficient size to barbecue is called a lobster. Some other great Australian words are Berko (angry – I would love someone to tell me why), cut-lunch (sandwich – cut lunch just sounds impossibly posh), daks (trousers – they were always known as kecks here when I was a kid, I wonder if it’s the same thing), jocks (pants, boxers) but by far the best thing is the fact that you are a nation of thong wearers. Over here we wear the far more onomatopoeic flip-flops on our feet because, in the UK a thong is a very flimsy item of female underwear – known in Australia as bum-floss: surely the word of the century. What’s not to love about a language that can do that?

Outward Looking

I concluded that a few of my most recent posts had been too introspective, so I decided that it was time to look out…

…Summer in England. Bright sunshine that could last for several minutes before the clouds develop and lightning rents the darkling skies. The entire village is out and about, walking the dog, running, cycling, turning crinkly red before the giant orb dissolves away and the rain starts to lap around the first floor window sills. The council mowers are butchering the communal grass areas, distributing the grass cuttings together with a thousand different kinds of litter and dog shit across pathways, roads and front gardens from where the gales that precede the coming storm will drive it all into my doorway.

The village is a-hum with serried hedge-trimmers and flashing lights as electric cables are clipped, oaths are muttered and manual clippers are rushed out of the shed, soaked in WD40 and pressed into emergency service. The village could be back in the 1950’s – if it had ever left them. Within the hour most hedges are neatly, occasionally precision trimmed and anybody unfortunate enough to have missed this fleeting window of opportunity will find themselves shamed by having something that resembles Miriam Margolyes’ uncoiffed bush surrounding the house. Sadly, the right weather for future trims may well not occur again until the autumn, by which time wet rot will have beaten you to it. (In the UK, autumn – the season in which the leaves fall off – can occur anywhere between March and November.)

Across the road the man in the corner bungalow takes the opportunity to dead-head his roses. He does this at root level as it stops the spiky little buggers from coming back again this year.

The bin wagon (or garbage truck as it is known by my grandchildren who watch far too much American YouTube) is meandering along the street collecting the carefully sorted recyclables (glass, tin, paper, certain plastics, soap-opera plots) garden waste (leaves, branches – below the diameter of a thumb – thumbs, cat crap, semi-digested bird, rodents, dead cats) and general trash (everything else, with the one specific exception of anything you really want to get rid of) and depositing them – along with an immovable oil slick – in a single ragged pile in the middle of the road. If I put the wrong stuff in the wrong bin, they put a label on and refuse to empty it. If I put the right stuff in the bin, I get to sweep it back up as soon as the truck has gone.

Middle-aged men who previously would have utilized this time by buffing their cars to the kind of finish with which Snow White’s step-mother was best acquainted are now throwing open the doors of the camper van, hoovering out the wildlife, mopping long-forgotten pork pie from the floor of the fridge, airing mildewed sleeping bags over the washing line and chiselling fossilized sausage from the bars of the Calor Gas barbecue. By mid afternoon they will be ready to go. It will be snowing.

The woman from next door begins to spray her fence, and I am happy that one side, at least, of my car will not suffer from woodworm for at least twelve months…

Gardening – a brief guide (part one – the fundamentals and the seasonals).

garden tools

Spring Bank Holiday is almost upon us in the UK and all thoughts turn to the garden and gardening. The garden centre is filled to capacity and, for once, not just with people waiting for the Sunday Roast. My little gardening guide is split into three parts, which will take us into and through the bank holiday. In the time you will eventually take to read it, you could have planted any number of shrubs, mowed several lawns or painted the shed. Just think of that… Now, would you like me to run you a bath?

Let us begin with a definition:
Gardening – The act of undertaking tasks for which you are not equipped, in a hostile environment full of lethal dangers both natural and manmade, from which you have no protection.

It is the arrival of Spring that first sends us tottering out into the garden with a broom handle (with or without broom head) to prop up the wonky fence panel; a dinner fork (as the garden fork will have rusted away) with which to dig up everything that has died over the winter, and several trays of various seedlings that we can watch over as they die in the weeks ahead. Each season brings its own challenges:

• Spring: the long, dark nights of winter are falling behind us and the time has come to collect together all of the tools that you accidentally left outside at the beginning of winter and spray them with WD40 – even though you know perfectly well that it will not work. Buds fill, leaves unfurl, early blossoms glisten in the morning dew and the door falls off the shed. Now is the time to give the lawn its first cut of the year, carefully replacing all the divots ripped from the ground by the winter-blunted blades as you go. However early you choose to make this first cut, it is always a) too early for nature and b) too late for your partner.
• Summer: your garden will be in full bloom. Now is the time to take a garden seat, reattach the leg with a six-inch nail, sit and enjoy the riot of colour and scent that is your garden in full bloom. Now is the time to throw away last year’s rusty – and let’s face it, unhygienic – barbecue and, if you’ve any sense at all, never to consider buying a replacement. Ever. Now is the time to find out where next-doors bloody cat keeps doing its business.
• Autumn: season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. In my experience, garden fruit exists in only two states: a) unripe and b) rotten. If you find something that looks ripe and hasn’t been half-eaten by insects, it is almost certainly poisonous. Now is the time to repair and pack away for winter. As most of your tools remain unusable from being left out over the previous winter and your garden furniture is so rotten it won’t even burn, there seems little point. Make the most of the relative warmth of long autumn evenings by filling the garden with candles. There is nothing quite like the combination of fading autumn light, flickering candle flame and red wine to heighten the awareness of your own mortality. ‘Tis the season to be maudlin. Although the insect-life is much reduced by now, most of what remains will either bite or sting or both. Wear a knitted hat at all times when in the garden. There is nothing worse than approaching winter with a grotesquely swollen ear that makes you look like Dumbo when viewed from the side.
• Winter: the best of all seasons in which to enjoy your garden – from inside. Revel in the fact that at this time of year nobody expects a person of your age to be out in the cold – and, also, that when covered in a thick blanket of snow, this is the one time when your garden looks just as good as everybody else’s.

The modern gardener faces a number of horticultural challenges seldom faced by their urban predecessors:

Hanging Baskets – The horticultural equivalent of the Mayfly: leave it unattended for 24 hours and it will die. If the weather is dry, it will die. If it is windy, it will die. If it is raining, it will somehow escape the water and die. I, on the other hand, will not escape the water as I will be outside watering the f*cking thing. Allowing the hanging basket to die is punishable by death or long silences punctuated by sighing.

Pots and Containers – Similar to hanging baskets (above) with the added attraction that whilst they too will dry out and die within twenty-four hours if not watered, they will also become waterlogged in the rain – and die.

Ponds – All the joys of a garden, with the option of drowning. If you must have a pond, just don’t be tempted to stock it up with expensive fish: they will only be eaten by next door’s cat who will continue to crap in your wellies regardless. As elsewhere in your garden, any expensive plants will quickly be swamped by weed which is almost impossible to remove. Ponds will attract all manner of wildlife to your garden: birds, frogs, toads, newts and god-knows-what when the lights have gone out. Official advice is that ponds require regular cleaning. If you have ever driven along the side of a canal that is being dredged, you will know how pleasant this task is. Whatever lurks at the bottom of the pond is either dead, smelly, slimy or all of the above. My advice is to leave it where it is. It may be a little unsightly, but the frogs seem to like it and the water is generally so green that you can never see the bottom anyway. Waterfalls and/or fountains require a suitable electric point from which to run them. The one thing I know about electricity is that it is never good news when mixed with water. Unless you want to get involved in a row with your neighbour over how, exactly, his cat came to be hurled, smoking, over the fence after trying to drink out of your pond, don’t bother with a pump of any kind. An electric pond pump will fuse the house more often than an inopportune finger in a leaking kettle and leave you continually fishing dead things out of the murky depths (preferably after turning off the electric). If you want to make more of a feature of your pond you could introduce some floating solar lights. They never work, but they do provide a convenient resting place for passing birds and they will not electrocute you when they finally fill up with water, turn upside down and sink.