One’s blog upon a time
Time and Space and Light sat confined inside a dark dark place, but could not stand each other. They had been dying to
get out but Gravity would not have it. Gravity, like Mugabe, and Idi Amin and many other African leaders to come 8 billion years later, wanted to rule forever. No-one knows exactly what happened but, in a singularity, perhaps when Time had had it up to here, or Gravity lost the plot, or Light emerged from under its bushel to tickle Gravity, or slap Space in the face, an almighty explosion followed. Light and Time and Space escaped. Gravity pursued, but Light was too fast and Space twisted and turned into different shapes in disguise. So Gravity took it out on any particles it could find. We can still see the fallout from this momentous escape in the fuzz on our TV screens.
Time knows no race, religion, creed or colour of humankind. It does not get angry when we measure its passing using its arch enemy, Light, but gets on with it, flowing like a fluid, shooting like an arrow, eddying, they tell us, coming and going, laden with our fresh and old baggage – faith, hope, love. It does not go on strike or demand higher wages or paid holiday or paternity leave, or laugh when we waste it writing silly blogs when we should be re-reading big books to expand our minds. It does not turn faster under pressure and slow down to draw out our suffering. The three hours you spend rubbing holes in your answers with your blunt pencil and mind in the exam hall are the same three hours you spend eyeing the one you think is the one in the pub.
Time is indifferent to hindsight or forecast, to our point of view, to the prediction of seers and prophets or to the division of bacteria or cancer cells.
In The Line in the Sand, ‘Time is a great Healer,’ says Sister Ning to Dele Verity. ‘Yes,’ says Dele. ‘But does she always come?’
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