Well—that’s it.  Today ends my last full week of work for another year. I will be in the office on Monday and Tuesday next week but, hopefully, just ‘tidying up’.  (Actually, I take that back.  If you are a work colleague reading this and have just remembered something you need to forward to me for completion before the Christmas break—I am absolutely, positively NOT going to be in the office next Monday and Tuesday.)   On Wednesday I will be joining the rest of my College colleagues at our Staff Christmas Lunch (we’re going back to Oasis as we had such a good time there last year) and then I am on holiday.  Woo Hoo!

Since people found out I am going to be away from the office for the next three weeks (that is worth saying again—three weeks!) I have constantly been quizzed on where will I be going, what will I be doing, what plans do I have for my time off?  Well, I am here to tell you people—I have one plan, and one plan only.  I plan to be flat out busy doing nothing . . .

Does this sound all very familiar?

Well it is.  It is exactly what I did this time last year, and it worked so well for me then that I have decided to do it all over again.  I know from experience that the time will go by in a flash and before I know it I will be back in the office, head down, bum up and starting all over again . . .

Time is a weird thing isn’t it?  It is an oft-observed phenomenon that time seemed to pass much more slowly when we were younger.  When we were kids each hour spent indoors in the classroom seemed to double in length as the day stretched on; the term between Christmas and Easter holidays was excruciatingly drawn out, and we hung out for birthdays which never seemed to come around often enough.

On the plus side, summer holidays (when we finally got to them) stretched out in an endless stream of hot days spent outside, trips to the beach, eating ice-lolls and watermelon, and (in my case) getting horrific sunburn and sand in places it just really wasn’t meant to be.  (To be fair, people with school-aged children probably still feel that summer holidays are endless—but for totally different reasons.)  Tempus fugit.  Now it seems to me that Christmas and Easter may as well be the same festivity for the space we get between them, holidays are still fun but are over in the blink of an eye—
and, well, don’t get me started on how often birthdays come around!

I wonder why the passage of time seems to pass so differently at various stages of our lives?

One theory is that each unit of time that you live through is only a small portion of your total experience, so, for example, for a one year old child, one year is, literally, a lifetime.  To a ten year old, a year is one tenth of their total experience, and so their ‘clock’ has really just begun to move.  For those who are 70, 80 or 90, one year is nearer to 1% of their total life experience and so the shorter time that is left races ahead and the past stretches out far behind.  Or, perhaps it all has to do with ‘anticipation’ and ‘retrospection’ . . .

Why time passes the way it does doesn’t really matter though, does it (and reading up on the psychological, philosophical or physical theories on time can just about do your head in. . . )  so I am just going to accept it for what it is.

I am going to take this time to relax and recharge.  I am not going to feel pressured into thinking I should be doing something . . . anything . . .  with my precious time off.

Feel free to join me—we’ll find a quiet spot, open a bottle and put our feet up . . .