when you are at school as a child they teach you that there are sixty seconds in a minute and sixty minutes in an hour and twenty-four hours in the day. but experience soon dawns on you that the teacher lied. you sit in class doing an exercise in your book waiting for the hands on the clock to move around and say it is home time. but no matter how much you will it. pray for it. it doesn’t happen. and you realise in that moment that in fact time has slowed down to a crawl. it is barely moving. it is working to thwart your plans.

and then on those rare days when your parents are not too busy and take you somewhere. a trip to the beach perhaps. you are loving the experience. building sandcastles. paddling in the waves. eating an ice-cream. but before you know. seemingly within seconds. it is announced you have to return to the car and head home. how had time moved so quickly then? why had it sped up to spoil your fun.

the same happens over longer periods. growing up as a teen you never seem to be getting old enough to do the things you want to do. you are always being told you are too young and have to wait. time seems to drag before those restrictions are lifted and you are free.

but when you are older the years whizz by. you were in your thirties then you are nearly a pensioner. a senior citizen. who took those years? where did they go? how did you get to be old?

the same tricks of time can happen when writing. you can be sat at home or in a pub or cafe faced with an empty page. first time moves slowly as you try to formulate ideas and not be distracted by the arsehole talking loudly on their mobile phone or the toddler who has decided to run up and down the length of the room being a plane whilst ignored by their parents. you knuckle down. get a few words on the page. then after a third of a page you hit your stride. the words are flowing. your mind has taken you out of the room to the writers’ place. the realm of thought and imagination combined with the physicality of putting words on the page. you are lost to that world. page after page is filled. you come to a natural pause. you look up at the clock. you wonder why it is now dark outside and how it got so late. a mere moment was in fact hours.

so if you want to beat time. use it to your advantage. take up writing. it transforms the ticking of the hands. it allows you to time travel. go from place to place. be in a room but not in a room. dissolve to nothingness. in your corner of the room.