Wednesday 1st August
It seems only yesterday when I was waiting, slightly impatiently, for the Millennium Celebrations to begin, glancing at my wristwatch as the clock approached midnight. Seems quite a long while ago now, and yet only a blink away too. And then the day when London was pronounced the winner of the 2012 Olympic Games, and now they are already here, and in a second or two they will be over. Before we know it, it will be Christmas again, that most tedious of festivals. Where does the time go? Why does it all fly by so fast, and is it me, or is it all going so much quicker these days, or was it always so? Maybe with all the information overload, with the internet and 24 hour rolling news channels and free newspapers you just have to pick up and glance at, with the constant hype of every new movie, with the hyperbole of scandal following scandal, with the ever changing world at our fingertips; maybe our little monkey brains cannot really begin to cope with it all. One almost envies those technophobes who refuse a computer or mobile phone or even a television. Imagine being hunkered down in a cottage in some tiny village where even the occasional postman is an unwelcome visitor, barely emerging from the dark interior except for a weekly foray for provisions you mumble to yourself about the craziness of the modern world and run a hand over the stubble on your cheek and root around amongst your meagre possessions for that old sepia photo of your parents on their wedding day. Can you really say that you would be any less happy than you are now with your i-phone, i-pad, 42 inch tv and wide circle of friends who care about you as little as you do about them. But even if you were that lonely old man in his cottage I am sure you would still be cursing the speedy passing of time.