Time – SOCIAL BRIDGE ~ Jean Tubridy connecting with you from Ireland

Bingeing

I clearly wasn’t walking faster than the speed of thought today because I found myself thinking about blogging and bingeing.

It all started when I met a woman coming against me in full conversation on the phone and looking as if she was talking to herself – one of those things that was a complete no-no in the days before smart phones.

Anyway, for some reason box sets came into my mind and I realised that I wasn’t entirely sure what a box set even is and I have been listening to how people have been bingeing on them in recent times and in pre-pandemic times. When do these people get the time, I wondered?

It struck me then that maybe bloggers are bingers in their own sweet way. Do we binge on blogging while others are bingeing on box sets and the like? I suspect we probably do or at least some of us do.

Then, I saw a rope on the roadside, stretching quite a long distance and I got a yen to have someone pick up the other end and to have people join in skipping like we used to do endlessly in the school playground and at home. I was always a skipper but loved when there was a gang involved. I suddenly found myself hearing bits of old skipping tunes playing in my memory and it’s only tonight that I went checking them out and hit on a favourite game that I had completely forgotten about.

I bet some will see it as not being in keeping with the feminist that I am but you have to remember that I have always been a tomboy:

Thought-Provoking Comments

It never ceases to amaze me how comments on blog posts can stay with me for days, weeks, months, years …..

There was one gem the other day that has been playing on my mind almost non-stop. It was from Klausbernd Vollmar at The World according to Dina | Notes on Seeing, Reading & Writing, Living & Loving in The North It was in response to my post about The Speed of Time and the line that got me was:

It’s amazing how many different times exist in our life.

It is almost impossible to think coherently about this because it starts to feel like that moment when you look at the sky on a clear night and begin to see more and more stars, some twinkling brightly, others less bright but nonetheless piercing.

I’d love to know which ‘times’ are most significant in your life? I still haven’t decided on my list but I know these would be high up on the list:

#1. The seasons

#2. Tide times

#3. Time as a child – right up to being an adult child – in other words time up to the deaths of my parents.

#4. College days

#5. Tennis times

#6. Times spent living in different towns

#7. Time as a mother

#8. Time before/since Covid

#9. Time of Troubles/Peace in Ireland

#10. Blogging time

#11.Times with beloved dogs of my life

The Speed of Time

I got into a debate with myself whilst out walking yesterday about time and it all came from it being now over 50 years since we made one of our big moves from one town to another. It feels like yesterday but it’s half a century ago.

Anyway, this got me thinking about making the most of time and, if I am truly honest, how to slow it down.

What tends to slow time down in my case is a visit to the dentist. A second feels like about two hours but while that’s the outcome I want, it’s not the method.

Things I love doing like walking by the sea, reading engaging books, writing poetry have the effect of leading to timelessness and suddenly hours have passed that I have been oblivious to.

That’s a lovely feeling in ways but to suddenly find that 4 hours have vanished – 4 hours that are gone forever.

I thought about getting up at crazy hours like 4am to make the days longer but I really believe sleep is crucially important and that it enhances health so extending days is not a good long term option.

The famous being mindful of every move, thought, sense is one possible way to extend one’s sense of time. But, I would only want to be doing that when it’s an enjoyable thing. I don’t want to be having to be overly mindful when the dentist is prodding my sensitive gums and saying: Umm?

My grand solution, which is not one I am fully satisfied with, is to be very conscious of time wasted and doing things to avoid it. This is akin to recycling and look at how that benefits nature.

A notebook kept for a few days, like a food diary, quickly shows up wasted time, though one person’s view of waste may well differ from another’s.

One of my biggest time wasting activities is sticking at a ‘problem’ until I have it sorted rather than taking a break and giving my brain a chance to ‘think’ or be prepared to ask for help.

Maybe, trying to slow time down is a pointless exercise, like trying to stop the tide coming in, but you all know about a watched pot ….

Three Years – Give or Take

I got a letter from the bank the other day that offered me all sorts of concessions on the grounds that I was three years older than I actually am.

In that moment, I saw with the clearest of clear vision that I wanted to hold onto those years, no matter how great the concessions.

I pretty much ran to the bank and asked them to give me back my time. The official with whom I was dealing was about half my age and, while very polite, clearly didn’t see the impact that being robbed of three years has the older one gets.

She asked me if I wanted the letter back and it felt like the time I was asked if I wanted my gallstone to put on the mantlepiece.

Empty handed, yet shed of years, I danced home and vowed to make the very, very most of those precious three years.

Don’t be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of.
Charles Richards

Last of Summer Time, 2020

Our clocks fall back tonight so it will be that much darker tomorrow evening.

I usually try to hang onto the precious hour of light but this year, I think I will try and embrace the darkness of the evenings and focus more on the light of morning.

So making the very most of every last ray of light this evening and looking forward to greeting a new dawn tomorrow.

Good Night Irene

It’s seven years ago tonight that I sent that text to the kind woman who was sitting with Mother in hospital. It read: Say ‘Goodnight Irene’ from me.

That’s how we always said ‘Goodnight,’ and it didn’t surprise me to hear later that Mother, who had suffered a severe stroke four days before, definitely responded when the message was read to her and that she then settled and passed away peacefully.

Seven years is a long time in some respects and no time in others. Mother’s presence has remained constant throughout as I do even the most mundane things like washing up. Most of all, though, she is with me when I’m lost in nature; nature that she loved and appreciated more than anyone else I’ve ever met.

What’s changed in the seven years is how I see her passing. All the horribleness of being cooped up in hospital has been swept away by the intervening storms and now it’s like she strolled down a May time path festooned with a blaze of nature’s colours.

These are the paths that she craved from her childhood growing up on a farm; paths that she walked with us when we were kids, teaching us about trees, flowers, wildlife; paths that she journeyed in her memory when failing health held her back.

So many paths come to mind but this one in our beloved Mount Congreve seems just right as I think of her now with a loving smile:

Waiting Time

I’m a bit of a punctuality freak so find myself with a lot of waiting time in all sorts of different contexts.

I’ve learned over the years that there is an art involved in putting waiting time to good use.

The thing is that one person’s idea of ‘good use’ could be another’s perception of waste.

‘Good use’ of waiting time, for me, includes: deep breathing; reciting favourite lines of poetry to myself; listening to the radio; jotting down ideas for blog posts; observing nature.

If I think about waiting time in my youth, I always hear the tick-tock of the big wooden clock that lived in the kitchen. Each second made its mark then and each second should make its mark now even if the clocks no longer tick out loud.

How do YOU wait?

Some Other Where

My late father was a stickler for correct grammar and for consulting the dictionary, if in any doubt. Given all this, it was a source of fascination to me that he never used the phrase ‘somewhere else.’ Instead, he would say ‘some other where.’

Some other where has deep meanings for me (and I think I can see now why Dad used it.)

The time that some other where comes into play for me most is around sunset when it’s dark and I’m pushing out the boundaries in terms of not being home. You know that extra half an hour or three quarters of an hour when they’d be expecting you back and have just started to wonder if the car has conked out or if Puppy Stan has gone missing or … It’s not quite time to start trying to phone but they know that the phone is probably on Silent anyway!

Well, the some other where is invariably on a beach wave-gazing; or high up on the cliffs cloud-gazing. Some other where is a timeless place; a place of oneness with nature; a place where the air is salty. It’s also a place where you lose yourself; you move so far into reality that you are experiencing rather than rationalising. Some other where is intensely peaceful; it loves shapes, shadows and silhouettes and it can see right through darkness to a where that’s neither here not there, just beyond or in-between.

This is how my some other where has been looking in the last little while:

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Do you have a ‘some other where?’

Blogging and Time

The relationship between blogging and time is a source of fascination to me and I often wonder how other bloggers carve out the time to blog.

I know I’ve pretty much dumped television since starting to blog (not that television was ever a huge part of my life) and I’d have to say that I tend to read fewer novels now than I did before the blog came into play. I’m not altogether sure if that drop off in novel reading was caused by blogging or just happened in and around the same time.

Obviously, there are lots of ways to find time, including getting up earlier or staying up later.

But, when it comes to blogging, the whole issue of time seems to turn itself upside-down and inside-out as the blogging world never sleeps. I rather like logging on in the early hours of the morning here in Ireland and seeing California, for example, in full swing.

There’s also the little matter of the way time seems to go away or not be part of the blogging process as one gets immersed.

I often wonder when other bloggers blog ~ is it at a set time? And how is it that some bloggers are so much on the ball in relation to answering comments and responding to posts?

The time that these questions hit me most is when I’m walking around the block with Puppy Stan in the evenings and I see televisions flickering in the corners of sitting-rooms.

Yes, televisions are still a key part of sitting-rooms in Ireland!

So, I’d love to know about your ‘blogging time.’ Curiosity is getting the better of me!

Sea Side Winter-time Week in Co. Waterford

The changing of the clocks to Winter-time fills me with absolute dread every year as all I can see lying ahead is dull, dank, dark, dismality. This year was no exception and I basically bid a fond farewell to all colour last Saturday afternoon with the clocks set to fall back at 2am on Sunday morning.

The week that has unfolded has shocked me with the colour that has danced on the beaches in and around me here in Tramore.

It all started at sunrise on Sunday morning when I went down to the beach in a state of total confusion about what time it really was:

Each day has brought moments of pure sensual bliss,

clarity,

shimmering

lipsticked skies

and absolute hope:

I hope your week has given you good reason to look forward and to see every colour, including black, as having a beauty all of its own.