Time Takes Its Time

Ah, well, time is like that.

When you are waiting for something you long for, time takes tiny little steps. The clock stops between your every glance at it. The second hand waits for you to turn away before it joins the other two hands in a well-deserved tea break and – possibly – a game or two of cards, while you are away at the window watching for her to come walking down the street, seemingly oblivious to time’s great conspiracy against you.

However, when there is some dread thing standing just around the corner of your life, something you just don’t want to meet that stands bestride your calendar like some portentous dental appointment, you know they that time will skip, jump and leap towards it as if there were no tomorrow, which there soon won’t be because all those tomorrows that stood between you and your red-ringed date of destiny have all suddenly disappeared, faster than your spending money on a big night out.

Time will then suddenly leave you too, facing your feared moment seemingly forever, time will be off somewhere else, hurrying up someone who is late for an appointment, dawdling with young lovers as the mount expeditions of discovery over each other’s eager bodies, while you are stuck within a short moment of time that stretches itself out like a cat in front of a winter fire until it fills forever.