No time like the present

When your broadband connection slows to a pace where continental drift seems to be a speed you can only aspire to in your dreams, an hour trying to get onto any website seems like a lifetime. Whoosh! Go the mountains as they whizz past you on their way to reshape the world. Wham! Go the plates into one another as all human history is eroded from the surface of this world, and still I’m waiting to connect to iPlayer…

Chug… chug… chug… I only popped up here to check on my email…

I was a young frisky kid when I bounded up those stairs… now I’m so frightened of tripping over this beard I’ve sprouted that I’m considering having a stairlift installed so I can get back down again.

If only I could order one online.

I thought I might catch up with “The Archers” before I started work. I wonder how Grace is doing these days?

Time passes. Time to think, time to stare at screens, time to kill. The minute everything takes no time at all, everything you have to do suddenly seems to take forever. Is that why no-one seems to pause to think any more? Is that why other motorists won’t stop and let you through when there’s not quite enough room for two cars to pass? Is that why we have to tell everyone what we’re doing now…? And now…? And NOW!?

I managed to stumble through more than three quarters of my life blissfully unaware of what most of the people I knew were doing most of the time. I didn’t care when I didn’t know. Most of the time it simply wasn’t that interesting. Brushing their teeth, combing their hair, eating their breakfast, why would anyone else want to know about these things? The devil might well be in the detail, but now I get too much detail. I didn’t think any less of anyone for not knowing every little fragment of their lives. There were boundaries. There were limits. There were things that were none of my business, quite frankly.

Maybe we’d meet up on occasion. If they were late I’d wait. If they were really late I might drop a coin in a public phone and try them at home and see whether they’d left yet before returning to sipping my pint and reading my book and slowly watching the world slip by as I waited. Next time we met there might be a “where were you?” or two but it didn’t really do any harm. We got by.

I could usually be contacted at home or at work. People knew where I’d be. If I was watching a film in the cinema, you could be pretty sure I wouldn’t want to be talking to someone at that time anyway, but I’d be home eventually, you could always call me back, or leave a message and I’d call you.

If you couldn’t get hold of me in these few places, most likely I was in the car or out with the very people most likely to want to talk to me anyway, probably wondering where you’d got to. In the meantime, we’d have conversations about a lot of things; if they’d had a particularly special breakfast they might have mentioned it, but we didn’t make a habit of it and usually felt we had more important things to talk about. Sometimes, if necessary, even quite quietly in hushed tones.

A solemn chat to discuss a worry… A problem shared with a friend.

Yet recently I’ve heard the most terrible things, the most intimate things, discussed at full volume in supermarkets and trains and in the street. Things I’d be embarrassed to discuss in a soundproof room with someone bound by a professional oath. But no-one seems bothered if I do overhear. Unless, of course, it’s noticed, that is. Then the possibility – that great modern elephant in the carriage we all choose to ignore - that I might have heard those most personal of outpourings means I’m glared at as if it’s my fault for eavesdropping on this hundred decibel “secret”. As if I had a choice. At least those old payphones had that soundproof bubble you could put your head under and try to be discreet, but now there’s a presumption of aloneness given by the separation of a train seat.

“You’re not in your living room, you know!”

Does no-one know how to set personal boundaries any more? Maybe it all just helps pass the time on a sad and lonely train journey when you’re feeling alone and hopeless, or maybe there’s a need to share that moment with someone you trust, someone who cares about you, someone who makes you forget the strangers all around you, strangers who now know more about you than they ever wanted to or needed to.

Still, it adds a bit of spice to the journey. It passes the time. It gives all the spectators something to talk about later on, at home, or on their own phones. “You won’t believe what I just heard. Right here, on the train. Not five minutes ago. She’s just sitting right there. Staring at me. She doesn’t look too happy, no…”

And time still goes by so slowly, except when a decade seems to disappear in the blink of an eye, and time apparently can do no wrong. But time, well it ages you. Makes you feel older. I’m only writing this to pass the time, and for all the time I am writing this, those emails will be piling up and I’ll have to reply to all of them.

If only I can find the time.