(sorry to any Trekkies amongst you this is not an episode from Star Trek )
Time - The part of existence that is measured in minutes, days, years etc., or this process as a whole.
Cambridge Dictionary.
On our walks during the past year we have spent much of our time meandering through the woods in our local country park. Oak Tree 1752 caught our attention very early on. One of the more majestic Oak trees in the park, it nestles on the side of the escarpment surrounded by a wealth of other flora and fauna almost hidden from view until you are directly beneath it. It is a truly magnificent specimen bearing all the scars of its many years.
All the major trees in the park are numbered to aid in the trees management by the local Council and Trust. This year Garry has decided to log the changes to Oak 1752 over the next 12 months, photographing its evolution through the seasons.
This got me to thinking what this Oak must have witnessed during its lifetime, from its emergence as a small sapling to its full glory today. If only it could speak what tales it could tell.
This brought me to my own thoughts on time and how they have changed somewhat during the past year. A pandemic and national lockdowns have seen to that.
Oak 1752’s number is an arbitrary figure. So its a lucky coincidence for me and my current thoughts about time that is so happens on Wednesday 2nd September 1752 the English Populace went to bed as usual but woke up the next day on Thursday 14th September 1752! The British Government had decided to move us from the Julian Calendar to the Gregorian, in line with most of the rest of Europe. The people were not happy. Urban myth would have it that there was rioting in Bristol (who would have thought it!) ‘Give us back our 11 days’, was the cry. That coupled with a changing of the New Year from March to January didn’t help matters. In fact the tax payers of London flatly refused to pay their taxes early, hence our financial year beginning in April to this day. Let that be a lesson to anyone messing about with our time!
I can’t help wondering when time became so all consuming to us humans. Stonehenge and it’s association with the summer solstice and ceremonial importance over 5000 years ago would have required a knowledge of the annual cycle of the sun for the coming together of the Neolithic and Bronze Age tribes. Gerald Hawkins (Astronomer) in the 1960s suggested it could be an Astronomical Calendar, although his theory was not widely agreed upon by other ‘experts’. Once mankind started farming an understanding of time and the seasons would become more important to life. Seasonal crop planting comes to mind.
Let’s not forget those Roman fellas and old Julius Caesar (we can’t touch on history without mentioning the Romans after all) who in 46bc, is credited with creating the first calendar, albeit 11 minutes short of the true solar year. Tch! I bet nobody was brave enough to point that out to him and here we are back to the Julian Calendar in 1752 which us English seemed to want to cling on to when nearly everyone else had moved on to the Gregorian ( 11 seconds more accurate) introduced in 1582 by Pope Gregory XIII. Religious festivals of course dictating the yearly calendar for centuries and as a result, our lives too.
On a personal level, how we value our time is limited to how much we are governed by the limits of time put on us by human constructs ultimately out of our control and nature and it’s inexorable passage through time, which is unstoppable - or is it? Anyway - All this from one Oak Tree numbered 1752 impressive though it is! The tree that is.
On a lighter note we have all the wonderful sayings and phrases which include time in some form or another ( there are so many it would be impractical to list them all so here are a few):-
Time and tide wait for no man! Folklore
Time is money. Benjamin Franklin
Better three hours too soon than a minute late. William Shakespeare
Time is the most valuable thing a man can spend. Theophrastus
Time is a storm in which we are all lost. William Carlos Williams
If time travel is possible, where are the tourists from the future? Stephen Hawking
I can go on:-
Once upon a time, from the beginning of time, making up for lost time, living on borrowed time, peace in our time, prime time, some other time, the right place at the wrong time, the sands of time, good time girl, high old time, third time lucky, time and again, buy some time, in good time chucking out time, call time, bath time, bedtime, kill time, party time, extra time………
And who says we are not preoccupied with time?
On the reading front most of us will have read or heard of The Time Machine HG Wells 1895 or possibly watched one of the films based on the book. I have been amazed by the sheer number of novels written over the generations linked to time and time travel. The earliest I have found was written in 1733 and called The Memoirs of the Twentieth Century by Samuel Madden. It concerns a guardian angel who travels back to the year 1728. Moving on a few decades Rip Van Winkle - Washington Irving 1819, A Christmas Carol Charles Dickens 1843. The intriguingly named Beatrice the Sixteenth by Irene Clyde in 1909 which concerns a time traveller who discovers a lost world of an egalitarian utopian post gender society. (Not a light read by the sounds of it). The children haven’t been forgotten:- Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce published in 1958. More recently I can remember enjoying the TV series Life on Mars and before that Lost in Space, Star Trek, Back to the Future, Galaxy Quest, Planet of the Apes. I could go on and on, there seems to be thousands. We really are fascinated by the idea of messing about with time. Maybe it’s because fiction is the only way we can control it and bend it to our will?
We took a trip to Greenwich a few years ago and along with everyone else straddled the Greenwich Meridian to have our photo taken and learned that that this is the reference for every time zone in the world. Greenwich Mean Time as I understand it is the yearly average (or mean) of the time each day when the sun crosses this Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. After this nugget it all gets rather complicated so I will leave it there. I must add it was a fascinating day out. We also visited an exhibition of Harrison’s Clocks and read all about the race to invent a clock that accurately allowed sailors to tell the time on ships whilst at sea, so they could work out their latitude. I can highly recommend a visit, when we are free to do so of course.
As a working Mum with two daughters, time often ran away with me. Our lives were strictly governed by time. School bus time, ballet lesson time, tennis time, homework time, work time, tea time, bedtime, term time, holiday time, family time and a bit of me and Garry time thrown in for good measure. For years after the girls left home I was still thinking I needed to be somewhere at 4.30 Monday to Friday. I am sure you Mums out there know precisely what I mean.
So the past 12 months of on and off lockdowns coupled with a recent retirement has taken some adjusting to because all of a sudden there is time in abundance it seems. And yet there is still only 60 seconds in a minute and 60 minutes in a hour and 24 hours in a day. But I am experiencing the luxury of time for what seems to be the first time since I was a child, when I gave no thought to it at all.
So do I think I have made good use of my time this past year?
Only time will tell. (Sorry I couldn't resist)
Thanks for taking the time out to read my blog. I have added various photos linked to the subject and some drawings from my Lockdown Doodle Journal that I thought I could share.
Fingers crossed for a bit more freedom this summer for us all. It would be about time!
Caroline