“concept arising from change experienced and observed: a quantity
measured by angle through which earth turns on its axis : a moment at which, or
stretch of duration in which, things happen : season: due, appointed, usual
time : hour of death or parturition…”
And it continues in that vein for two more pages. I’m
talking of course about time. That theoretical concept of movement; we look back to a time with fondness, rush to
be present at a point in time, and look forward to a moment in time with
excitement.
My thoughts on time gathered pace yesterday. I believe it is
because of the effect Wiltshire has on me. It makes me think and feel in an altogether
different way than anywhere else I know. I slow down. Time stands still
somehow.
I began ruminating on the process of time after arriving at
the Waggon and Horses pub in Beckhampton. This ancient public house in the
Avebury hinterland, hard by Silbury Hill was, and remains so, a favourite pub
of ours. And, in addition, the inspiration for the famous coaching inn scene in
Charles Dickens’s ,The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club (also known as
The Pickwick Papers).
"Tom cast a hasty glance at the upper part of the house as he
threw the reins to the hostler, and stuck the whip in the box. It was a strange
old place, built of a kind of shingle, inlaid, as it were, with cross-beams,
with gabled-topped windows projecting completely over the pathway, and a low
door with a dark porch, and a couple of steep steps leading down into the
house, instead of the modern fashion of half a dozen shallow ones leading up to
it. It was a comfortable-looking place though, for there was a strong cheerful
light in the bar-window, which shed a bright ray across the road, and even
lighted up the hedge on the other side; and there was a red flickering light in
the opposite window, one moment but faintly discernible, and the next gleaming
strongly through the drawn curtains, which intimated that a rousing fire was
blazing within. Marking these little evidences with the eye of an experienced
traveller, Tom dismounted with as much agility as his half-frozen limbs would
permit, and entered the house"
The book continues on to report groaning table of fine
vitals in this comfortable coaching inn, whereupon the characters of the novel
meet and exchange a bonhomie story or two before the inevitable disaster
strikes.
And bonhomie it remains.
I was due to attend a Trustees meeting at the Richard
Jefferies Museum near Swindon. Finding I had a couple of hours to spare, time
enough to visit the Waggon and Horses for a light luncheon before the main
event.
The bar was quite empty for a Friday lunchtime. A couple of
middle aged men in working attire reading the papers, pint glasses in hand; an elderly chap on a table by himself
surrounded by a selection of post vitals crockery, a pair of ladies in deep
conversation in the window seat, gin and tonics in hand, and a characterful dog
cum engaging ragged mat called Katy who was causing consternation to her owner
perched on a bar stool, by wandering about getting her lead entangled in table
and chair legs.
Low beams, dark wood, old paintings of stagecoaches, wooden
floors, every time I enter this favourite hostility it feels like a timeless
place to rest the traveller’s bones.
“I last came here in
1947 when I was stationed at Larkhill just after the war”
I’d just sat down with my pint of Wadsworth’s bitter when
the old gentleman hidden from view behind the settle announced to the two paper
reading gentlemen opposite this point in time.
“It’s changed a lot
since those days, yes, I last had a pint in this pub in 1947 – great days, I
was stationed at RAF Larkhill, me and the boys would come down on the Garry and
spend the night here, no breathalysing in those days, how we got home I’ve no
idea. I’m 87 you know but I still drive. I was stationed at Larkhill you know,
it’s a long long time ago, a whole lifetime ago. This place has changed so much
since then”
The newsprint pair joined in this conversation and as it
wheeled around I half listened, to their conversation. All of which was
reminiscing of the good old days, things were never as good again, more
especially from the octogenarian how much this place had changed since his last
visit, a lifetime ago.
It abruptly ended when a lady arrived and remonstrated with
the Larkhill wanderer;
“There you are, I’ve
been sitting in the car for ages, I thought you’d gone there”
One only has to guess why the lady, presumably Mrs Larkhill
was in the car, or why Mr L had not joined her there. But all was well and they
left out the very same door Charles Dickens would have entered close to two
centuries ago en-route to Bath, when presumably like me he observed the goings
on at this ancient pub and then put pen to paper. My guess is should Charles Dickens have
returned in 1947 (unlikely considering his demise in 1870, but stick with me)
he too would have struck up a conversation bemoaning how much the place had
changed since his last visit.
Time has that effect on life, and on the generations, and
therefore time distorts.
There is an environmental discipline which has many names, such as
baseline shift, but the term
generational amnesia is one that is growing in popularity. Origins of this
recent idea are vague but in 1995 a marine biologist Daniel Pauly used the term
‘shifting baselines’. This attempts to
define the way in which each generation develops a set point in time (a base
line if you like) when they are accustomed to the way their countryside and environment
looks and feels. This for that generation is the norm from which everything
else is judged, what went before was possibly better (greater biodiversity in
nature terms), everything which has happened since their developmental stage
shows how much the environment has degraded over time. In other words time
distant clouds exact knowledge and function in history. It was different back
then.
Of course it was, time moves on.
This generational amnesia also applies to life in general.
We all look back with fondness to our childhood and formative adult years.
Experiences were new and exciting. That first tree climbed, our first kiss, the
first car, first holiday without parents. All markers in the passage of time. Inevitability in one’s lifetime.
I feel blessed myself that memories of my early years remain
razor sharp, it’s only what I did this week that fails in my 51 year old brain.
The scent of wet grass, the bubbling sound the river coquet
made over riverbed pebbles, my parents endless house parties, playing with friends
in a disused market garden, my father in his art studio seeming always covered
in glitter, mother always in the garden or talking to people as I wished to
keep walking, glorious pre-school breakfasts on the beach, endless summer days and
day trips in the car to the Lake District, Yorkshire or Scotland. Pleasurable
events and should I suffer from generational amnesia then this was the norm.
Life was always picnics, sunshine and happiness.
It wasn’t of course. I
remember the dull drudgery of November Sundays where boredom literally clawed
at my soul. I can still remember one such afternoon, dark, cold and miserable
and in the distance an ice cream van’s optimistic jingle attempted to lure
people into the grey forbidding streets of the Colliery Village a few miles
away (where we from our village never dared to go). Village life as an only child could be excruciatingly
tedious. Mastering the ability to ride a
bicycle alleviated some of this as I could travel far and wide, well at least
as far as the coast 3 miles away to have an ice cream.
Having arrived at the Museum I was eager to see the changes
and I have to say astonishing improvements in the last 6 months. The Jefferies
Museum in 2015 is definitely not one that has stood still recently; it has
changed quite a bit, time has not stood still here. Dr Mike Pringle the Museum
Curator and Hilda the Education Officer have worked tirelessly to rescue this
fading gem, and as volunteers for little financial reward.
One of these changes is the arrival of a miniature railway
to the back of the Museum. Swindon Borough Council is building this at their
Coate Water Country Park, the boundary of which abuts the Museum grounds. Negotiations are now complete and a station,
or more correctly a halt, will be created at the Museum, allowing visitors to
arrive by train. Something Mike is sure Richard Jefferies himself would have
approved of. The Museum is actually the
farmhouse where he was born and where his formative years were spent. These formative
years rooted Jefferies in a love of the pastoral countryside around this part
of Wiltshire, something he wrote fondly of as an adult having moved away for
work and living near London.
What marks Jefferies out from many countryside writers is
that he did not dwell on the past as if in a golden hued aspic, he embraced
change and lived very much in the time, that time being the expansion of Victorian
engineering, quest for knowledge and societal development. He looked forward
too, to a time he would never see, in such works as his 1885 novel After
London an early example of "post-apocalyptic fiction": following
an unspecified catastrophe, England is depopulated and the land reverts to
nature. What few survivors remain, return to a quasi-medieval way of life. Many
now say this is the time this may happen as we degrade the environment beyond
its ability to recover.
Likewise the rusting speedometer I discovered in the Museum
grounds had befallen an unspecified catastrophe and was slowly reverting to
nature. It had been unearthed as part of the general clearing of the Museum
area which over decades has become a dumping ground for all manner of detritus.
And there it lay having travelled, within a vehicle of course, for 96100.1
miles.
I have absolutely no idea what car or vehicle this came from,
this however is part of the history of time I love. Rusting and decayed, no
longer able to work, yet this can inform us of so much of the passage of time,
should we let our imagination run wild.
In a time not too distant past, a brand new vehicle would
have rolled out of a garage showroom. Mileage 00001. The new owner excited at
his or her gleaming purchase, maybe children excitedly in the back seats looking
around in wonder at the shiny new seats and bright metalwork. The adventure begins.
As in life, there would have been a honeymoon period.
Everything was new and exciting, it all worked beautifully, it went on holiday,
to picnics, to the workplace. As this mileometer travelled over hill or dale,
what did it see I wonder? Gazed at continuously by its owner, a relationship
and bond would have developed. It would have informed of the passage of time,
500 miles, 1000 miles, endlessly it’s numbers crept up as time after time it
served the owner well. I love this car.
Yet time took its toll. Eventually irritating hiccups
developed into annoying breakdowns and in time the milometer became unloved, a
reminder that age was increasingly making this vehicle unreliable. At 96000 miles this car was a wreck, hiccup,
was that the last breath, destined to become nothing but scrap. Its gleaming hedonistic
days of 00001miles but a distant memory, a new generation of faster, more
powerful vehicles now criss-crossed the roads. I’d love one of these new cars, this pile of
rust is not worth keeping any more.
Outdated and unloved at 96099 miles it still ran, but only
just. Barely connect to an engine and
body it like a dying swan performed its last mile, the engine revs dropped, the
wheels stopped moving and with a final click of the ignition key it stopped.
Time had caught up with it and with the engine cooling silenced forever. It was
a good innings 96100.1 miles.
The world never stands still. Had the vehicle this belonged to survived battered
but intact maybe in an old barn, a new generation would have discovered it and now
it would be a much loved object again. Restored as a classic car, it would be paraded
and feted with maybe children excitedly looking around in the back in wonderment
at how something ‘so old’ could have such shiny and bright metalwork.
“Dad this is a lovely
old car, can we have a car like this?”
“Not today son –
but I remember my grandfather having one –
ahh happy days going on summer picnics in the back, they just don’t make cars
like they used to in the old days son, these were proper cars, had such characters, wonderful memories, I
wish he’d kept his, would be worth a fortune now”
Tempest fugit forgets the oil leaks and dodgy breaks, handling
of an ocean liner, thin tyres with no grip, headlamps with the candlepower of a
firefly, wipers that never worked, no heaters, picnics in rain soaked cars, or the 0-60 speed of 2 hours!
You see, time changes everything quite a bit, for every generation.
Now where did I put my watch…
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