Walking through London last Saturday, I joined other tourists and stood in the middle of a packed pavement to grab a photo of Big Ben. With the main scaffolding now gone, following the recent mammoth refurbishment programme, it looks magnificent once again but looking at the clock face it made me think about… time.
As the saying goes, “time and tide wait for no man” and how true that is. You might be the richest person alive, the most famous pop star currently on this planet, or own the fastest car ever built, but at some point there will be someone richer, more famous, or with a faster car, because it’s going to happen!
When we think about what has happened in our lifetimes for the first time, this year we can say that our monarch, Her Majesty the Queen, at 96 years of age has set the record as being the longest reigning British monarch in history, at 70 years. Had it not been for the French king, Louis XIV who served as monarch for 72 years, the Queen would have been the longest reigning monarch in world history.
This is the first time that most of us have experienced a world-wide pandemic, Covid has had an effect on the lives of the majority of people on this planet, something never witnessed by us before, but has changed many of our lives as a result.
Unprecedented change
We have experienced the effects of climate change with this week’s unprecedented heat wave, with temperatures reaching levels in some countries higher than ever recorded before, and something we will all have to get used to and adapt to if we can’t make a difference between us in time.
Time has been called on the UK being part of the European Union, time has run out for our beleaguered prime minister, and time for change is the ‘buzz phrase’ around the Houses of Parliament at the moment.
Time matters most if you are an athlete, a split-second can make the difference between winning or losing, gold, silver or bronze or being first to finish a race.
Bringing a new life into this world could be ‘your first time’, receiving a life threatening diagnosis could mean time is running out, and having the time of your life at that juncture has never meant so much.
Looking at Big Ben prompted me to look at time from a deeper perspective, but clogging up the busy pavement in Westminster on a very hot Saturday afternoon was short-lived. The clock for me was ticking, everyone needed to get somewhere, so it was high time I moved on and got out of their way.
Image Credits: Nick Forman .