'Sweet childish days, that were as long, As twenty days are now.' Wordsworth

Two of my friends have become grandmothers this week and I am very happy to have someone else to talk with about all things grandchildren related! Sharing how amazing everything a grandchild says and does, how impossibly gorgeous they are and how, no matter how busy you are, no matter how worried, stressed or upset, the second you think of your grandchild a warm glow fills you and you find yourself smiling inanely. The first time my grandson spontaneously said ‘I love you’ I thought I would burst with happiness. That is the purest ‘I love you’ of all. I was one of the first grandmothers in my circle of friends and it is nice to have others reaching this stage of life with me. One of the new grandmothers is holding a party for grandmothers soon and we will look (and behave) very ungrandmotherly. I hope.

Talking of parties I held a Flat Anniversary party at the weekend and was blessed with the most amazing weather. And I wasn’t the only one with the same idea as a couple of the neighbours also had friends round, with wine flowing and lots of conversation and music, both in our homes and on the communal lawn, where there was a real street party atmosphere. It is hard to believe a year has passed since we all moved in and everyone I spoke to expressed the same amazement at the speed at which time flies. I am convinced the speed of time has actually speeded up in recent years and this can’t possibly be because I am getting older. At this rate when I am 70 a year will last approximately 6 months, a ‘dog year’ in fact. I am really alarmed about time running away from me. I want my days to last the 24 hours they are supposed to and a week with a full seven days would be a luxury. Not to mention a month that had its full quota of days and not the 28 days my months have been reduced to in recent years. And why has the wait for Christmas been reduced a mere blink of the eye? When I was a kid you had to wait a whole loooooooooooong year between Christmases and now they follow each other like shadows. Nowadays, as you hand out your Christmas gifts you know you will be shopping for the next years ones before the pine needles have fallen off the tree. It’s not as if time drags when I’m bored. It used to. I am sure that whole afternoons would drag on when I was in school or when I had a very boring Sunday visiting the odd old relative. Or when I was in for an evening and there was nothing worth watching on TV and I had nothing interesting to read. Oh no, time dragging is a thing of the past and now it simply whizzes by, so I only have time to watch one programme, or read a couple of pages, before I have to get some sleep. And sleep? I close my eyes and turn over to snuggle down to dream and the next thing I know, barely seconds later, my alarm rings and I have to abandon all idea of sleeping and instead have to get up and get ready for work. Even the journey to work has speeded up and the days when I could listen to a whole CD on my way to work have long gone. Now I manage to listen to a song, maybe two, before I have arrived at my destination.

Maybe what they say is true - time, like poverty, is relative. But although you can by a lottery ticket in the hope of becoming rich, time is given and taken away in the same instant. It can't be earned, saved up or won back. Buying time, living on borrowed time, saving time are all popular sayings that refer to mere humans juggling with the concept of time. But one thing we can be sure of. It will catch up with us one day.