Day 81 - Time It Is

I wonder if there is any scientific foundation to the fact that we all know; time definitely goes much faster when you’re older.

I remember as a kid that the summer holidays were impossibly long and lazy. We would spend, it seemed weeks and months on the beach doing not much, school was a distant memory and school starting again for the New Year was still so far away. Each day was longer than the previous…

Alas it has all changed. Days are not actually 24 hours anymore. The earth has sped up on its axis and they won’t tell us officially. There has been a collusion of governments and really clever people to make us think that they days are still 24 hours, but they’re not. We all know they’re not. They can’t be. Each day fly’s by in a blur of speed, us (or is it just me?) barely able to complete the days task before the sun sets. Before you know the week has gone and it’s the weekend already and only two days till the sun shines again (why is that? The sun always seems to shine on a Monday?)

It is also proven scientifically that the length of the day is directly proportional to the amount of fun you’re having and directly proportional to the pressure you’re under to complete a task. So for example, if you’re at the dam skiing with your mates the day will fly by and before you know it the day will be over and you’re packing to go home. Conversely if you’re studying for an exam the day will drag by, lunch will only be tomorrow, dinner and TV maybe only next week. And if you’re setting up a new business with a million things to do, there isn’t enough time. Period.

And so this is my life again. Setting up a business successfully takes vast patience and a circus like ability to juggle a whole bunch of things simultaneously. In the final days it requires an inordinate amount of belief in the vision that was originally set out because until the last pile of dirt is swept up it doesn’t look like it will ever finish. And there is always someone drilling into something and making a mess of new cleaned surfaces. Bastards they are I tell you. But these same drillers and wreckers of clean things themselves possess skills that I don’t so it is difficult for me to hurry them along. If they are working fast or if they are working slow it all looks the same pace to me; what does happen though with alarming repetitiveness is that the day runs out far too quickly and the really skilled people go home. Leaving me to admire their handiwork in the gloom of dusk. Wondering if tomorrow they will show progress, wondering if tomorrow they will finish one area to move to another of the project. And each day it is the same, and each day it seems that they will work and create mess in all corners of the building.

We are now only a few weeks away from opening our doors again. It is now the time to put menu’s together that reflect Englishness, to choose spirits and wine that take nothing away from the traditional ale drinking habits of this region, to incorporate the daily doings into the community at large. And still, even with these good things the day still ends prematurely.

We are long down the list in this buildings history of people using it to make a living. In the more recent past Geoff Hurst of World Cup ’66 fame (he was the guy who netted the hat trick in England’s only world cup football victory) used to own it, as did a bloke, Colin, and his wife for twenty odd years. From him a large pub company, the type of which I gave my views on recently, bought it and in a short space of years destroyed it.

In the ancient past, the building had an overnight cell in its attic where murderers and vagabonds were kept overnight on the carriage journey to London. In its cellar, a tunnel (now bricked up) used in Cromwellian times existed for safe passage to the church building. As I’ve said before parts of the building date to the 16^th century and locally it appears that the pub has been the heart of the village for generations. We hope to restore this faith that so many people have had in these walls.

Until tomorrow. God speed.