On my 30th birthday an old – and much older – friend said to me, with feeling: “I tell you, son, 30 to 40 goes by in the blink of an eye.” True that, as no one said at the time. He might have added that 40 to 50 flies by even quicker and, I’m unhappy to note, 50 to 60 still quicker. Every Friday on my radio show, after the midday news, I’ve got into the habit of saying: “It’s four minutes past 12, so I can wish you a very good Friday afternoon. The weekend is upon us.” To myself I then mutter: “Christ, that went quick.” One week to the next. Swoosh. Like the sound my computer makes when it fires an email into the ether.
Yes, life flies by ever quicker. This isn’t news, I appreciate. But since the start of this year I’ve been longing, and I mean longing, for a specific day in May to come round. I don’t recall longing for a day to come like this since I was a kid longing for Christmas. Perhaps you get out of the habit. A very loved one has gone travelling, which is great, but I’m somewhere between 10% and 90% not myself while she’s away. I yearn for her return, which isn’t grownup or clever or even very healthy, possibly, but there you go.
And here’s the thing: it now strikes me as rather unfair that while one decade after another zaps past, and each Friday follows the previous Friday as if the six days in between didn’t happen, when it comes to the approach of the date in May I’m yearning for, time slows to a crawl. The date barely gets any closer. Often it feels as if it’s getting further away. I’m 58 this month and I’m only just fully appreciating how time can move extremely quickly and extremely slowly at the same, well, time.
I need to find a way of managing this. My physiotherapist has given me an agonising stretch to ease the agony in my shoulders. I’m supposed to hold it for three minutes. Time passes very slowly there too. When I’m next watching my football team press for a goal in the final minutes of a match, I’m going to do that stretch to stretch out time. In the meantime, roll on May. Can we give April a miss this year?
Adrian Chiles is a broadcaster, writer and Guardian columnist
