But … but …
Hang on a minute. Didn’t we only just say goodbye to 2008? I’m sure it was only a week or so ago.
I guess that’s how it goes.
When you’re young and desperate to grow up and be an adult and do all those things that adults won’t allow you to do, time drags. I can remember way back to when each day was so long it was hard to fill it with things to do. Even before I went to school I can remember Mum ‘popping out to the shops for five minute’ and leaving me at home, and how it would seem like ages till she got back. Good grief – it could seem like a day from smelling the stew in her pressure cooker to seeing it arrive on the plate and tasting it!  And it seemed like a lifetime between my brother going to school, leaving me an ‘only child’ and me catching up and going to school too – and I did that at four years old instead of the usual five, because we were lucky enough to have a nursery class attached to the local primary.
My life up till then had been quite restricted. I’d been confined to our eighth floor flat pretty much all day apart from a little local shopping with Mum – fairly usual for a very young child in the fifties, I guess, but a little local shopping was about it for the weekdays because Mum was an ‘outworker’*. There were no trips to the park until the weekends, and no visits to relatives because there were none in London, and no visits to friends because a) Mum was too busy and b) I didn’t yet have any.
So the nursery class with its huge, brightly painted rocking horses, outside play equipment, and indoor puzzle games was pure delight to me. Or would have been if it hadn’t been for a little boy called Raymond and his sour-faced friend. Yes, I remember the pinches, the snatching away of game pieces and the stripey tee shirt he always seemed to wear! But I also remember kind Mrs Gasgoine in her pink nylon overall – and how tall she was! And I remember how I cried when it was time to move on up to the real school and my first infants class.
And I remember how time dragged that first day. Surely it must have been hours between watching Mum walk away without me to go home, and someone coming in to fetch me from the cloakroom where I was crying my eyes out?  They must have had special super-long days in that class, because I’m sure it was a week till milk-and-biscuits time and a month from then till going home time … and then it was so long until the next morning and a repeat performance that I’d forgotten all about the existence of the damned place. It was a real shock to be hustled out of the door again in my school mac, I can tell you!
As I grew older, of course, things evened out a bit and I learned to cope with boredom and distress and how very much longer the hours took to pass through either of them, and I learned that longing for something to happen didn’t make it arrive any quicker, and time settled down and stopped teasing me.
Now time has developed a new trick. It speeds up when I’m not looking! OH has been saying for years that it only seemed a fortnight since he put the Christmas decorations up into the loft, and now I know what he means. This year has both dragged and flown by. Dragged in the early stages of my grief over losing the dogs, and then my recovery from shoulder surgery, and flown by in that I don’t seem to have had time to do anything, and here we are at New Year again. I’m beginning to think OH is right and we should just prop the tree up in a dark corner so it’s handy for when Christmas turns up again next week.
So Happy New Year to you all! May 2010 be kind to you, and bring you happiness – or if you’re going through bad times, support and love and acceptance for what you can’t change. May it bring good fortune and joy, at least some of the time. May it bring you peace.
And please – may it last for a proper year this time!
*She took in little bits and pieces of work from local factories and completed it at home.
Very clever shot!
This year has flown, I suppose that is the way it goes as you get older.
Anyway, have a fabulous new year Jay!
Kala´s last blog ..The night is young …
Happy New Year to you and yours! Yes, may it last a proper year this time, I need a full year!!
I do plan on taking more time for me in 2010!!
T´s last blog ..Happy New Year
The year has flown by, but when I looked through my blog the other day to make a retrospective, I was amazed at how much I had done!
Have a great 2010!
Mara´s last blog ..Oil-balls, apple-flaps and bombs
I wish you a very Happy new year and I want to thank you for the entertainment your words are giving me, with or without following pictures of the beautiful Mr Depp. Best wishes to you and all your readers
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Ain’t it the truth! Were it not for these extra 40 pounds that managed onto creep onto my bones this year, I would swear the year was only a month long!
Wishing you health, happiness, and plenty of Depp sightings in 2010!
ethelmaepotter´s last blog ..Happy Anniversary, My Son
We always seem to be saying how astounded we are at the speed of time. If only we realised when we were children how the years would race by – I wonder if it would have made any difference.
A very Happy New Year to you Jay and your family, hope it’s special. A x
Oh Jay what a lovely and nostalgic post! I had forgotten all about milk and biscuits in the classroom and school dinners and lumpy custard. The older you get, the faster time flies. Have a wonderful year. I’ve really enjoyed the blog over the past couple of years and hope you have the stamina to keep going. Much love from down under (which is really up over)
Helen
Baino´s last blog ..All Over Bar the Hangover
Oh yes please. Let it last a full year this time. It’s getting scary how quickly time is going.
babs – beetle´s last blog ..From us to you!
Beautifully said, you are so very correct. Ahh…Jay, you have written my thoughts as your own. Amazing though we are miles and miles apart we lived very much the same in the early years…well until my Dad joined the military anyway.
Loved reading your thought of the now…and then, and it sounded all too familar.
Hugs and well wishes for 2010. Scritches to Sid.
Happy New Year.
“I’m beginning to think OH is right and we should just prop the tree up in a dark corner so it’s handy for when Christmas turns up again next week.”
heehee! I’ve thought of doing this too… I know someone who puts their tree away completely decorated – but for me, that ruins the whole point of the tree!
Happy New Year!! (We’ll be doing the crackers you sent me on Sunday for Epiphany!)
Thank you Jay, for a wonderful post on that strange, ephemeral nature of subjective time. I do hope your 2010 is full of more happiness consistently, than 2009…
Now, the ABC thing – I hope you don’t mind, but I’ve pinched your idea and just had a COMPLETE alphabet post. Based on one messy corner of my house. But no JD, sorry. Just the effect.
Katherine´s last blog ..ABC Messy Corner Day
Kala – Thank you! Yes, I think it’s getting older that’s doing it, for sure! Happy New Year to you too!
T – Go for it! Everyone needs to learn how to make time for themselves. Me, I’ve perhaps taken too long doing that, and I need to get out of my comfy chair a bit more often and do something useful. At least I’m able to be more active in greyhound adoption.
Mara – Perhaps I need to go back and read my blog, too, to see what I have managed to do this year. It would be a good exercise!
May 2010 smile on you, too!
Helene – What a lovely comment to read! Thank you!
It’s good to hear that you enjoy my blog, even without the Delicious One putting in an appearance. It does make me happy to know that people get pleasure from what I write here.
Best wishes to you, too!
Ethel Mae Potter – You too? It may be more than forty pounds, here, I dare not look! Good luck with losing some in 2010. I’m going to make the effort. Again.
Strawberry Jam Anne – I suspect it would have made no difference at all, if we’d known how time would fly when we were grown. We do what we do. And now we are grown, do we try to pack as much into each day as we can, knowing our time on this earth is growing shorter each day? No, we don’t. Such is human nature!
Baino – Aw .. thank you! I love your blog, too! And when I don’t have much time to do the rounds, yours in one I do pick out to visit.
So, if you’re ‘up over’, does that mean I’m ‘down under’? That’s very confusing. LOL! Although, you might notice I never refer to the antipodes as ‘down under’ despite hearing it all through my childhood. It’s more ‘the other side’ really, isn’t it?
I’ll tell you what, though. If I were to dig straight down from here, I’d rather come out in Australia than in China!
Babs – It is scary, isn’t it? I’ve read that it’s actually a sign that our brains are slowing down, and that’s scary in itself!
Sistertex – You had a similar childhood? Well, I guess a lot of people did, but it might explain why I feel a kinship with you – not just because of the greyhounds! The odd thing is, whatever our childhoods are, however strange and however rarified, they always seem normal till we grow up, don’t they?
Jeannine – Putting a tree away completely decorated? Oh nonononono. That’s not playing the game at all! ROFL!!
Happy New Year to you too – enjoy the crackers! Did we send you the balloon animals ones? I can’t remember now.
Katherine – Thank you!
I don’t mind in the least that you pinched my idea – although it isn’t really mine, it’s Mrs Nesbitt’s from the ABC blog. Ideas themselves aren’t copyright, are they? Only content. And you gave me a nice link back!
So that’s what they mean when they say time is relative
Lovely post and I hope you’ll have a very good time this year.
carolina´s last blog ..Something very special, just for you
where do the years go?/I was looking for an aunt by marriage and they said well she’s 83 / I remember a vibrant 40 I can imagine what people say about doddering me hahah
sandy´s last blog ..Today’s Flowers- a big frost approaches this week. I will bag them and try to save but I believe 20 is too severe