The Little Shop of......

Around the corner from my house there is a little shop that fascinates me. When I first moved in here two years ago it was an Antiquarian bookshop that had just closed down. I remember feeling gutted that it was no longer open, as it looked just like a magical bookshop from a kid’s book. You know the type. Old fashioned window panes, small but stuffed full of piles of books: the sort of place that Balthazar would run to hide from bullies in “The Never Ending Story”, or where Mo would find a copy of Inkheart. As a rabid book lover, this store held the promise of so much magic that it was devastating to discover it too late.

It sat empty for a while, the outline of the words “Antiquarian bookshop” still visible despite all of the signage having been taken down. I was curious to see what would happen with this cosy space, it just seemed so sad and lonely empty. After a couple of months of lifelessness things began to change. I walked passed once on the way home, the front door was open and it was being cleaned. Life was returning and I felt quite excited about it.

This excitement was replaced by confusion. It is hard for me to describe the new identity of the shop. It was one part gallery, one part geek-fest, one part second hand “stuff” shop. I suspect that it was trying to position itself as a source of great collectibles. There were Star Trek figurines, model boats, second hand books, a giant tortoise shell and the list goes on. It was the shop equivalent of a car boot sale and it struggled to find its feet. Instead of having shelves full of different things to search through, they had a limited number of items displayed in cabinets (hence the part gallery feel). It wasn’t cosy at all and I don’t think the building approved. It didn’t embrace this new look at all, but seemed to throw shadows to deliberately clash with the decor and contents. I never saw anyone actually browsing in there, only the large shop keeper and a woman I think may have been his mother. One of them would always be sat in there waiting. It made me think of a spider sitting patiently in its web.

It took well over a year but I wasn’t surprised when the “Closing down sale” signs appeared recently. I did feel sad for those that had tried to make a go of it there, but having never spoken to them I didn’t have a personal connection with them. I was a little pleased for the shop though, hoping that the new incarnation will fit the personality of the space better.

The new signage has just gone up on the window and it is now going to be a florist’s shop. The lettering fits perfectly with the window panes. This bodes well. Maybe, this shop has found out what it wants to be, only time will tell but I will be treating myself to a bouquet on opening day.

My War on Time

The concept of time has been keeping me awake recently. I can almost hear the seconds marching across my bed during my futile attempts to slip through the magical doorway to the land of sleep.

How can something that we can’t see, touch, taste, hear or smell have so much power? It has tendrils in everything that we do dictating when we work, sleep, eat, worship, start a family, drink, have a break, play, holiday, relax and the list goes on.

As a species we are obsessed with Time: this invisible commodity that apparently even the richest cannot buy. We are all allegedly time poor, so a deluge of products has been developed to help us save up our quota of Time. We are willing not only to pay more for these Time saving offerings but to damage our health. Instead of crafting a healthy meal we pump ourselves full of salt and sugar courtesy of fast food, ready meals and snacks created for “the professional person on the go”.

Cars, trains, planes, boats have all evolved to help us in our rush to get from A to B, with the average distance between A to B growing with every decade.

We strive to master Time, this human construct of schedules and deadlines, but this is a fight we cannot win. Time will always have the upper hand because the more time saving devices we create, the less time we have as a result. Email enables us to get our responses to requests out faster, but it has also led to the number of requests we receive growing exponentially.

This obsession with Time could ultimately lead to the extinction of the human race. Kind of ironic really: we’ve chased time so aggressively that we’ve created a planet that will soon wipe us out and start again. Maybe the creation of the first clock was the day that the first nail was hammered in to the coffin of humanity. It is just like us to create the schedule for our own destruction.

As an individual though, there is very little that I can do to save us from the end that is coming at some as yet unspecified moment in time (fear not though, I’m sure lots of experts are working to pin point the exact end date). What I can do is look to my own relationship with time and how it has impacted on my own life. That at least I can change and the reality is that I have been bullied by time all my life and it’s time that I stood up for myself.

I am drawing the line in the sand. From now on I’m going to listen to my body clock and not the persistent nagging of the watch of my wrist (heaven forbid we lose track of time!!). I’m also going to become more aware of nature’s rhythm. Seasons will no longer just be about the weather for me, but about when different fruits and vegetables are available locally.

Obviously I can’t completely ignore my watch and my many alarm clocks (I’m a night child in a society scheduled by morning people). I need my job to keep Louis in the manner to which he has become accustomed (he has expensive taste in cat food). My job demands that I be a slave to time. But that is just one aspect of my life. Surely outside of work there is a window of opportunity for me to listen to the rhythms of the world around me and to be really present in my life.

Instead of constantly planning and scheduling I’m going to find a mental space where I can simply be: where I can observe how I feel (when did you last check in with yourself?) and be in tune with the sights, sounds, smells, textures and tastes that surround me. It will be in those moments of really being that I will finally be able to turn around and show Time the finger.