The sound of the speed of oneliness

'When you're weary, feeling small..' It's July 1970 and Ian Lyons has just pressed 'play' on the small, battery-operated tape recorder that every family seemed to have in those days. We lie back on the very uncomfortable slate-grey pavement outside his house, stare at the hazy summer sky, and listen in contemplative silence to Simon And Garfunkel's album Bridge Over Troubled Water from start to finish.

That's one of my favourite childhood memories and, as you might imagine, it seems a long time ago. Well, that's because it was.

Fast forward, then, to when we opened the Shakespeare pub in Malaga just over ten years back. All logic says that it should feel like a fifth of the time that has passed since listening to Mrs. Robinson et al on our childhood street but it doesn't, nothing like it in fact. The truth is it seems like yesterday. There can be only one conclusion to be drawn from this: time accelerates - or at least appears to accelerate - as we get older. Why?

If you find the time to indulge in some in-depth research (Googling things), you'll see the principal explanation for this phenomenon is that youngsters are constantly witnessing novel experiences whereas old codgers are knocking the same golf ball into the same holes three times a week and not seeing anything new except a different pair of crimplene slacks from time to time. To tell the truth I don't understand this concept at all because I'm rubbish at science but it seems to be the de rigueur reasoning and maybe it'll ring true with readers of the boffin variety.

But no, actually, come to think of it, it simply can't be true because just this weekend, I had some visitors to stay and we did loads of stuff, most of which I'd never done before: the Malaga car museum, the fortress in Vélez-Málaga, rambling through the countryside getting punctured by the most vicious brambles on God's green earth, etc. I even had a slice of pizza which I hadn't done for about twenty years following a ghastly experience with a Four Seasons sporting a crust the size of Krakatoa. This one was a bit better but no, the lasagne is always a wiser choice in any Italian restaurant.

Sorry, I got sidetracked. The point is, even when you do loads of new things, time hurtles by at an alarming rate once you reach a certain age. This weekend lasted about half an hour as far I could tell.

So, carry on golfers, safe in the knowledge that we don't know how to slow things down any better than you do.

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