It's About Time

Very limited personal time this week, so when a spare couple of hours popped up, Sheena and krewe wandered over to the Centre of Time and Space ....

before getting some pie, mash and peas for breakfast at Goddard's Pie Shop.


Visited the National Observatory in Greenwich and did a wonderful (ie, free) self-guided tour of the birthplace of regulated time, measurement and other aspects of control that surely inspired Mussolini decades later.

Realized my new hero is John Harrison. Inventor of four of the most significant time pieces in history, he who laid the groud work for safe and reliable intercontinetal travel. Today's visit to one of the most influential centres of research into the earthly time/space continuum was deeply moving.

It struck me that the one thing in this entire world that Sheena takes for granted is time. That's right. I haven't worn a watch in years. Maybe even going on a decade. I have some lovely time pieces, including an heirloom Gucci, but as a rule, never wear a watch.

It's because I always know what time it is. It's in the air. Cell phones, computers, TVs, public clocks, other people, cash registers, cable news TV, credit card slips, cigarette machines, subway stations, blackberries, car dashboards... there is always a way to know what time it is.

Today helped remind me that it wasn't always like this. Sailors sunk, trains crashed, farmers starved, businesses failed in the days before time was put under human control. What a tremendous leap into the modern age it was when men figured out how to draw imaginary lines on the earth as they already had in the sky.