When something that is so regimented in its construction as time can be so loosely interpreted, what chance do we have in understanding complex variants, in concepts such as politics, laws and Ikea instructions?
60 seconds to the minute; 60 minutes to the hour; 24 hours to the day. These never change, yet when listening to Michael Owen commentate on a football match for BT Sport, 45 minutes can feel like a week.
Get 10 people in a room and ask them to all look at their watch, or phone. To each individual that is the time. Yet they could all be slightly off with the time on each other's devices. Time them becomes "about 10ish."
This acceptance of 'loose time' allows us to always be roughly on time; a tad early; a little bit late. It gives us an extra couple of minutes in the morning before we ask "where did that last half hour go?"
Distance and time are also loose. We live 10 minutes from the shops. The salesman at Carpet Right asked me how much floor covering I required for my stairs, I said "It depends. If the door bell rings I only about need about 5 seconds' worth."
We like to think of ourselves as factual; definite; know what we want kinds of people. Yet we are so loose with so many things, willing to abandon sensibilities for chaos because of one single issue. And somehow, with all this unstructured woolly behaviour, we mange to live in large groups. OK so we loosely interpret other people's beliefs and declare them to be wrong, then start really telling them they're really wrong until they fight back; then we complain that they are fighting back and declare them to be terrorists. And yes I'm talking to you Mr Carpet Right Salesman! I am not a terrorist - I just don't like patterned carpets!
So here is a short-ish poem-ish kind of thing.
ISH Its ten-ish Its blue-ish Its 20 minutes down the road-ish Its dark-ish Its loud-ish Its over there by the round-a-bout-ish Its soft-ish Its old-ish Its the last place you bloody left it-ish Its now-ish Its gone-ish Its you've messed up again-ish Its lonely-ish Its cold-ish Its time to leave the world alone-ish
Thank you for reading - Colin Davies
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