June 2007

During the early years of my industrial career, I was told: “Keep an eye on what people do and not what they say!” My advisor adding, “Time is most precious and must not be wasted, so look at where they actually spend their time.”

I was reminded of this admonition recently when a friend who was listening to the radio suddenly and irritatedly exclaimed, “Why are they wasting my time and licence money with this rubbish!”

His outburst got me thinking about how the BBC uses its time, and so I recorded the topics discussed one morning on Radio Five. In addition to sport, there were drugs, teenage pregnancy and green and gay topics. Tiring of this, I turned to Radio Four and listened to various groups discussing much the same issues. Everyone appeared confident that the problems could be solved by more time and something they called resources.

A few days later and with these thoughts in mind, I went to evening prayers at Upleadon and listened to a sermon about the man who planted a fig tree but, because it hadn’t borne fruit in three years, wanted to cut it down. His gardener however persuaded him to give it more time as he, the gardener, would trim its peripheral roots and manure it.

The speaker then referred to eighteen people who had died when the tower of Siloam unexpectedly fell on them and reminded us of how time is precious and that, although we may think we are immortal, we are not. As he spoke, my mind repeated the words of a late uncle who, when he rang to tell me that my father who served in North Africa during 1942-4 had died added, “You are on the front line now!”

Thoughts of being on the front line made me remember that my great grandfather who fought the Boers lived to age ninety-three, and that I have always associated him with the song about the Grandfather clock that ticked ninety years without slumbering but then, “Stopped short, never to go again, when the old man died.”

Some years ago to save time, I decided to repair an old family clock and was pleased to get it going again. My pride did not last long however, because at two o’clock, the fingers pointed to eleven and the clock struck four. It was not until the next morning however, that I finally accepted that my attempt to save time was vain, when my young daughter came rushing into the bedroom excitedly calling, “Daddy, daddy, its seven o’clock and the clock’s just struck eighty four.”