Speeding up and slowing down  

Tuesday 26 May 2015

There is nothing worse than being stuck indoors when the sun is shining. Now the weather is really warming up, your humble scribe is itching to pull on his boots and head for the hills. But - alas - there just seems to have been one thing after another that has delayed my departure.

I had originally planned to hike the Oze marsh region in Gunma ken this week to coincide with the blooming of the unfortunately named Skunk Cabbages (whoever thought of that name was a clearly a bit of a charmless berk). It's a trip I've been looking forward to for quite a few months - a 3 day/2 night hike across fairly flat terrain but with a whacking great 2346m peak in the middle of it. The idea was to explore the area in preparation for a return with Big M in July when the lilies are out in the marshes.

Minus the mountain, of course, as my Mrs only operates on the flat!

Well, so much for the planning. Running your own business means that you are at the beck and call of customers and potential customers, and there's been just enough activity to ensure I haven't been able to get away for 3 days. And then, there was The Great Kitchen...

I will shortly be visiting the UK, but before being allowed to leave the country I was under strict orders to complete installation of Stage 2 of The Great Kitchen of Tokyo. This was quite a major project, involving the removal of walls, the installation of other walls, plumbing, electrics and major redesign of kitchen units. I achieved this milestone last weekend, and although I have to admit I thoroughly enjoyed it, it has put a massive spanner in my plans to get away.

I guess in common with others my age, there seems to be increasingly less time to do stuff. I really worry about the speed that time seems to whip past now without me having done very much at all. After some careful consideration, I think I have a theory to explain why this is.


It's common knowledge that things start to speed up once they start to go downhill. At 53, it's fairly safe to assume that I am on a downhill slope and accelerating fast. And, as Einstein taught us with his Special Theory of Relativity, time appears to move at a different rate for different observers depending on how they are moving. So for me, accelerating steadily, the world appears to be speeding up; for others, I appear to be slowing down dramatically, which is pretty much the observation of my daughter! I am sure Albert was onto to something here - hence the reference to "relatives". 

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