Not just when you are the driver of a train ..
Half Man Half Biscuit lied to me in the sixth form common room, well they didn”t give the whole picture. It”s not the only occupation that makes time fly by – far from it. So having avoided a career with East Coast mainline for this very reason I feel slightly cheated in the advise I was given and hope to forewarn others of the vast array of time thieves and speeder uppers that lurk and are attacking you now – trust me. Today we will start with the biggest time takers I know
- Children.
Today is my youngest son”s Jorge’s 11th Birthday – he”s lying asleep now with his 2 older brothers – so I am writing this whilst my vocal chords are limbering up for the family von Stevenson version of Happy Birthday followed by present un ripping and card ignoring unless they have cash in them.
As a younger parent – you will get some wise older owl telling you to make the most of it and you will do the polite – not really listening – nod of someone that is on top of their game and spending loads of head and physical time with the new love of their life. You don”t see that you are potentially at the top of a downward curve. You are in fact spending loads of time watching them when they do bugger all apart from eat, burp, smile and shit. This will slowly slide down as you find the joy / pain of CBeebies and continue downhill as they find things more interesting Jigsaw”s, Mud, Water, Bikes, X-Box, Sport, Mates, Girls, etc.
Now I would like to think I did listen to my wise old owl. I made a pretty big career choice when I realised I had stopped listening and I need to thank Brendan (my owl) for taking me to one side when Jack was born and telling me how I should be careful not to fuck up like he did with his kids and not let work take over. The bit that he didn”t understand or explain is that one of the reason”s you lose track of time is that your children are born with a Dr Who like ability to accelerate it and it”s your fault if you don”t keep up. When they are happy /smiling or growing time speeds up and they do loads of this – much of it instigated by parents at a younger age. It is a growth drug that speeds up everyone else”s time. When you look back at your youth it seemed to be so much slower – so it doesn”t affect your own.
What can you do? Well my approach has been to try and embrace it – at my worst I ignore it and it just went quicker. I don’t get to smile as much and all of a sudden I think their music sounds shit and I ask Joe to sort out technical issues with the new gadget as he’s better at it than me. I also get a little fatter and greyer as I slip away from the drug that keeps us young. When I am on it, I don’t say “in a minute” and do get my ass whooped at FIFA or kick the ball over next doors or take over the jigsaw. As a result I get some of the drug, I feel it kick in and all of a sudden dub-step makes sense, I have lost 2 stone, have a dark beard again and can get the WowWee to kick out some outstanding bass – simple.
So the answer to eternal life is to spend time with your kids and then keep breeding until the older one creates grand children and so on. It may not work – but you have to accept that they make time go faster – so embrace it or grow old without a smile on your face.