I’m using this example to explain a little of what happened overnight in the holiday cottage.

It’s an old converted barn and the windows have shutters that you close on a night in order to keep the heat in and the light out – not that there is any light of course, we’re in the middle of nowhere and the only light you get is that from the sun.  Obviously as we race towards the Winter months, we’re seeing less sunlight that we have done over Summer.

When the bedtime reading lamps have been switched off and you’re ready to sleep, it’s pitch black – absolute darkness.  No amount of time passing will allow your eyes to adjust to see anything – you can have your hand in front of your eyes and you can’t see it – it looks the same with your eyes open or closed.  It’s bizarre – especially when you live on a busy main road and there are streetlights outside your bedroom window for the rest of the year.

It should be peaceful and relaxing – truth is, its really, really disorientating.  Your mind plays tricks on you – the passing of time seems to fall away into some strange dimension where a minute can seem like an hour.  Sue woke in the middle of the night to go to the loo and switched the light on – I checked my phone as I thought it must be around 6/7am – it was 2:30am.  I felt like I’d had a full nights sleep.  It’s just weird.  I ended up going to the loo and then listening to music on my iPhone for half an hour or so to try and get myself back to sleep.

I remember last time we were here, we bought a night light for the bedroom, just one of the ones you plug into the wall socket and it shines a tiny amount of light out – not because we were scared of the dark, its just it was so disorientating that it was uncomfortable.  We left said night light at home somewhere – todays task is to find another one.

I woke up a bunch of times through the night, with no light to indicate whether or not it was getting towards morning or not – I couldn’t remember just how much of the light came through the shutters in the morning so when I awoke and saw a thin sliver of daylight coming through the underside of the shutter I thought it must have been getting on for 9am.  Wrong, it was 7am.

So there you go – light affects you in funny ways.  When there isn’t any of it, your body does wierd things to your head.

In other news, the cottage is lovely as always, we had fish and chips at Mr Chips in Whitby last night (it’s becoming something of a tradition – we’re three for three on that one) and then came back here and collapsed in front of the TV to watch X-Factor.  WHY ARE THE TWINS STILL IN? THEY SUCK BALLS!

Looking forward to enjoying the rest of our holiday, spending today with Paul and Margaret who are driving down from South Shields.  They should be here about 10am.  Which means I need to go get dressed.  Then I shall be beating Paul at Guitar Hero in Whitby \m/

Time…

Or at least the passing of it and how we’re all forever wishing it away. 

We’re always “looking forward” to something. 

In the words of a 900 year old Jedi Master:

Never his mind on where he was. Hmm? What he was doing. Hmph

It’s so true it’s unbelieveable – I mean think about it for a second. 

From Monday morning you’re looking forward to the weekend.  Let’s take it back a notch, you look forward to lunch, then you look forward to going home, is it any wonder that the evening seems to pass by so quickly?  Then you’re looking forward to the weekend which seems to fly by without stopping. 

Now looking forward to the weekend doesn’t necessarily mean that you hate your job and want to get home, I know that I take great enjoyment in my work, it’s just something that everybody does – how often do you hear people say “thank (insert name of worshipped deity here/random swear word) it’s Friday?” We look forward to our own personal, private time. 

Another example is that you book a holiday and you spend the next 6-12 months looking forward to that, counting down the days, wishing your life away.  It’s got to stop.

I turned 28 this week.  It’s been almost 10 year since I left school.  10 years! That’s more than a third of my (current) lifespan – I’m working on hanging around for a while longer yet.  Still, it’s been a long time.  It doesn’t feel like it though. 

I did some reading in to time perception a while ago, the way that we measure time is flawed due to there being no anchor which ties it to how old you are – when you’re 10 years old, the 6 week holidays seem to last forever, Christmas’s and Birthdays were ages away, I remember the gap between Christmas and Easter feeling like forever! When I think back to how long the schools days seemed to last – it’s nothing in comparison to work days now and I’m at work for longer!

Now that I’ve had 27 full summers, the 6 weeks in the middle doesn’t actually feel like a great amount of time in the grand scheme of things, and it’s not really. 

I guess marketing and shops are partly to blame, Christmas Decorations for sale in September, Cadburys Cream Eggs for sale in January, everyone tries so hard to push through to the next stage of the year. 

Everyone looks forward to the next pay day, counting down the days till the overdraft is cleared in the bank account.  We spend so much time looking towards the future, we often forget to stop once in a while and take a good look around. 

We went shopping today and I tried to slow myself down, tried to take the time to have a look around, in a shoe shop whilst waiting for my nephew’s feet to be measured I spent time taking in all of the different colours, shapes, little details I’d usually miss.  I’m usually that concentrated on walking around from one place to the next that I just don’t take any of this in at all. 

It was interesting in Centerparcs not wearing a watch, time seemed to last longer, leisurely walks could be enjoyed and it was nice to sit back and take everything in.  After being surrounded by woodland for the week and not being able to see much past 20m, coming out and looking around a big city from the passenger seat of the car sends you on a head trip. 

I’m going to try to stop looking forward to the future and try spending some more time in the present.  I’m going to go to work every morning and (try to) enjoy every minute of every day, take everything as it comes and deal with things in a more logical manner.  I’ll still be booking holidays and they’ll be something to look forward to, but not at the expense of the present.  At the end of the day, we have all the time in the world, we should make sure that we try to enjoy it.  I know I’m guilty of this most days, I need to try to work out ways in which I can enjoy every minute of every day and stop wishing my life away.

Providing the procedures I put in place are correct and they’re followed through, everything should go smoothly.  If I’m on holiday or off sick for any reason anybody should also be able to pick up where I left off and carry on with it. 

BETT last week was amazing, it was great to meet so many customers and see reactions to Frog 3.0

So, thats enough about work. 

I decided to jump on the scales this morning for a mid-week check up, wish I hadn’t bothered.  I’m 2lb heavier than Saturday’s weigh in.  I know I might lose this weight by the time that Saturday rolls around but it’s made me think more about the exercise and the impact that it has on the way my weight loss will progress. 

Plans to go to the gym this week were foiled by some strange pain in the side of my neck, possibly one of my glands.  The pain seems to carry from my ear down to my shoulder.  Using some of the diclofenac left over from the accident last year seemed to keep it under control today at work.  I’ll monitor the situation and if it’s still an issue next week, I’ll call in at the doctors. 

I’ll probably be the first person in work tomorrow morning, that’ll be strange.  It’ll give me a chance to catch up with some tickets and finalise one or two things with the system I’m putting in place.  Need to double check a few things.

I really need to get the IMDB challenge back on track, I also need to devote some time to the Xbox and 360.  Aaaaaaaaaaand I need to do some spring cleaning. 

There’s just never enough time!

67 nights?

Jesus thats crept up quicker than I thought. 

Sort of looking forward to it, I mean I get a few days off, thats good – right?  The thing I hate about Christmas is I often want to buy things, sometimes with money people have given me for Christmas.  Since most of the things I buy or want to buy come from teh intarweb and the postal service is shitter than usual it means waiting around. 

Still at least I’ll still have Amazon Prime, and thats generally next day delivery. 

Clocks go back in a week, I used to love this one – it meant an extra hour in bed.  I still hate the one in Spring, losing that hour really grates :p  I just know that this time next week it’ll be darker, sooner.  I used to think the nights were cosy and great – you’d have the fire on and it was just nice.  That was back when I was little, the evenings used to last forever. 

Its funny because I remember people telling me that time seemed to fly once you got older.  Sayings like “School is the best days of your life – Enjoy it” were commonly passed.  I remember doing some reading a few months ago into time perception and how our age affects our perceptions of time.

See when you were 10 and you had the 6 week holidays you’d only had 10 years worth (possibly less than 4-5 that you could actually physically remember – if that) of summers.  The days stretched out long and far, the whole of the Summer holidays seemed massive.  Now, at 27 years of age I’ve had many, many summers.  We’re approaching almost 10 years since I left school.  Thats insane.  I don’t feel any different from when I was there – I have more money and I don’t have to spend as much of my free time doing homework and things, but still I seem to not have as much time. 

I mean look at the time now, its 18:12 (whilst I’m still writing this) on a Sunday evening.  If it were Monday I’d have been home from work for less than 45 minutes.  Maybe just finishing up tea.  Theres over 12 hours until I have to get up in the morning but whereas in my old job I’d have to be there for 7:30, I don’t have to be at work now until 8:30.  I’ve got Steve picking me up on the way tomorrow so I don’t actually have to be up until after 7 – he’ll be picking me up just after 8 so I can either get a shower tonight or get a shower in the morning.  How much after 7 I’ll actually be able to sleep I have no idea. 

Not sure what I’m going to be doing tonight after Sue goes to work.  Might fire up the 360, don’t know if I can be bothered.  One thing I won’t be doing is watching the final part of the 100 scariest moments on E4.  Enjoyed the first half but theres no way I’d be sleeping tonight if I finished it whilst I’m here on my own.  How stupid is that? 

I’ve often thought about that – why do I feel safer when Sue is in the house?  Its not like she could protect me if something bad happened – thats my job, man of the house.  I guess having someone else there, breathing gives your brain less reason to listen to the strange noises that houses make when they’re cooling down, or its windy, etc. 

She’s working nights Halloween too, I like watching scary films on Halloween, this year I’ll be watching something non-scary :p  Something like erm, Back to the Future.  That’ll work :E

Speaking of scary films, all the latest offerings from the last few years are all about gore.  Thats not horror.  We need some more Elm Street or Friday the 13th offerings, but something that is new and original. 

I watched Indy 4 this weekend.   Really, really enjoyed it.  I’d heard really bad things about it but I watched it expecting the worst and had a jolly good romp.  Some really funny moments in there.  Some pretty unbelievable ones too but its never been the sort of film to take seriously.

Sean Connery’s absence is explained by his death.  I’m perplexed by this – At the end of Last Crusade, both he and Indy drunk from the cup of the covenant.  Thats perpetual life.  How’d that happen then?

That’s enough brain dumping for me.  I’m thinking about possibly playing Day of the Tentacle or something later.