Time's Winged Chariot

So, another year is nearly over and the milestone for me of another birthday, come and gone. A 76th birthday bringing me closer to 80 than to 70 which feels significant in some indefinable way. I keep thinking ‘where does the time go? How can I have been alive for seven decades?’ A brief anecdote: When driving to my favourite restaurant in order to celebrate my birthday, my daughter Suzy said ‘ best if you turn left here’ as I sailed straight ahead on my preferred route. I said ‘that’s exactly what you said last year” and then I realised that she must have made the comment two years ago, because last year I was staying at Anna’s house. And yet the memory of her telling me what to do (and my ignoring her) was as fresh as a daisy.

All of which has got me thinking about the passage of time, especially at this precise moment, on the cusp of a whole bright and shiny new year.

I have wondered for a while now if it is a universal human experience to feel that the older we get, the more time is speeding up. I am aware that there is now much more sand in the bottom of the egg timer, but why does it feel as though it’s running through at an ever-increasing speed? The famous line “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons” from T.S. Eliot resonates with me more and more, but mine would be much more mundane and prosaic. “I have measured out my life in toothpaste” because I clean my teeth every morning and, in a blink of an eye, I am cleaning them again before I climb into bed. 

There is a wonderful passage on this very subject in ‘Inside Story’ by Martin Amis which I would nominate as by far the best book I have read this year. The book itself defies description, being part memoir, part novel, part treatise on good writing. I chose to read it just after Amis’s death last summer. He was almost a contemporary of mine, having been born in 1949, so a great many cultural references were familiar, as were the people he wrote about, including Saul Bellow, Philip Larkin, Elizabeth Jane Howard (his stepmother), and his beloved lifelong friend, Christopher Hitchens who, like Amis, died of esophageal cancer caused no doubt by those endless cigarettes they were both addicted to. I wish I could find the passage in the book to quote for you, but suffice to say that the experience of time speeding up with age was one he also felt acutely. I kept wondering if, whilst writing this, his final book, he had a presentiment that time was indeed running out for him. 

Of course, as always, it is to Shakespeare that we should look for the perfect expression of the relentless passage of time. “Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow creeps in this petty pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time, And all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out brief candle. ” Macbeth makes this very famous but utterly desolate soliloquy on hearing the news that Lady Macbeth has just died. It is truly ironic that Shakespeare could then write “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing”. Truly Ironic, because of all people, Shakespeare’s words have signified so much and illuminated the world for four hundred years.

The other day I heard a very funny anecdote told by Peter O Toole about Macbeth’s ‘Tomorrow’ speech. As a very young Irish actor he had a minor role in Macbeth playing alongside a famous English actor in the title role. During rehearsals, this very pompous actor had bullied, denigrated and belittled O’Toole mercilessly. On the opening night, as Macbeth asked “How goes my lady?” O’Toole’s line was “My lady is dead” thereby triggering the famous ‘Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow’ speech.  Instead O'Toole said “My lady has recovered very well” and walked off the stage and straight out of the theatre. Having wreaked his revenge, O’Toole went on to have the last laugh by himself becoming an even more famous and renowned actor.

Last week, on Christmas Eve, fourteen members of my family sat down to have a meal together. Five of us were well over the age of 70, the parents and grandparents of the nine others gathered there. I would have loved to have asked them all whether the sense of time passing seems to be speeding ever faster with their advancing years, but it was such a happy, festive and jolly occasion that it felt deeply inappropriate to do so. Instead, I reflected on how very lucky all five of us grandparents are to still be living such full and independent lives, a privilege denied to Amis who died at 73 and Shakespeare who was only 52, and also to our own parents most of whom were younger than us when they shuffled off their mortal coils.

So, failing that ideal opportunity for research, I thought I’d turn to all of you. It’s New Years’ Eve and tomorrow it will be 2024. I can barely credit that 2023 has already run its course over 730 squeezes of toothpaste, 365 days, 52 of these blogs and 12 months, when it seems like only yesterday that I was preparing to take down last year’s Christmas cards……. 

So, let me wish you all a very happy and healthy 2024, because, before I know it, Suzy will be telling me that I should have turned left on my way to the restaurant where we will be celebrating my 77th birthday. Please reassure me that I’m not alone in feeling that Time’s Winged Chariot is careening ever faster!

Happy New Year everyone!

Tricia x

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