Time contracts

Okay, now, as soon as I actually type the words ‘time contracts’ I realise that, yes, I am currently negotiating a contract to do with a Time project. But what’s on my mind is how time itself contracts – as opposed to expands.

Take any one thing I’ve done this week. Publisher meeting, writing for AppleInsider, running an evening writing group named after a pub that doesn’t exist, constantly writing on trains, working for and with the Writers’ Guild, bits with Cucumber Writers, discussing the difference between fire eating and fire breathing with a performer on a day-long workshop I ran, and writing a fake online poetry workshop called How to Poet as a test for another project.

Any one of those sounds good and I relished every pixel – but not enough. There was no time to enjoy it enough

For it’s been one of those cases where you are deep into something and then absolutely have to wrench yourself out in order to then be exactly as deeply into the next one.

See me in any of these events or actually doing any of these things and you are seeing me at my happiest. It’s just the bits in between.

Typing on trains because it was the only time to get something finished. Relying on the brilliant thing that I regularly remote-control my Mac from anywhere – and then discovering that this week it decided not to work. Technology. It’s alchemy and such unfair alchemy too.

I’m not going to say that we should a moment to enjoy things when we’re busy. I’m not going to Ferris Bueller this.

And, yes, true, I am thinking it’s great to be busy and that is all very nice for me. But what’s on my mind is what you’ve had too: a week that simultaneously seems like a month and an hour.

And you’ve also had this: you’ve let things slip between the cracks. I need to go write some apologetic emails.

Unfortunately, I’ve first got to go on a speed awareness course. But I didn’t tell you that.