[Holidays, Swiss relatives visiting from overseas, and a mis-timed meeting at Morialta falls, reminds me of this post I wrote some time ago. I ran out of time for a fresh and pertinent post to publish, so here is this old but timely post—with a few adjustments related to the skill of storytelling.]

WARPED TIME

An argument broke out between two members of our family over time—threatening a war that would rival the epic war of the Time Lords from the Dr Who series.

‘You better allow at least two hours to get from Zurich Airport to Wattwil,’ a member of our family who came from Switzerland warns.

‘What? According to Google Maps, it should only take an hour,’ another family member shows their relative the map on their computer screen. ‘See? It’s only sixty kilometres—and we’ve got the freeway.’

And so, a joke endures in our family that time speeds up in Switzerland, perhaps owing to the mini-black hole created by the Large Hadron Collider.

Fast forward to Zurich Airport August 2014…and we witness not time, but our relatives, fresh off the plane, stand still for an hour and a half, debating where to change Australian dollars into Swiss Francs. Is this what our relative meant when they said all goes slower in Switzerland? For them, perhaps, not us. Up until then, the only impediment to our timekeeping was a wayward Tom Tom who prefers scenic routes to the more expedient ones, and road works—the bane of summertime in Europe.

So, maybe it wasn’t the mini–Black Hole after all, but I have observed time does speed up or slow down depending on the place and activity. You may have heard the old adage: “Time flies when you’re having fun”. When I’m painting, I’m in the zone, and hours melt away, and a whole afternoon disappears into night. My son will come to me and ask, ‘When’s tea?’

‘Soon,’ I say. ‘Just need to do a few more dabs.’

Another hour slips by and my husband comes and says, ‘It’s nine o’clock, when are we eating?’

Fine then. I put down my brushes and admire my work…for another half an hour.

Yet there are places where time slows and stretches almost into eternity. My mother and I are convinced that Magill, a suburb east of Adelaide city, is one of those places. We love our “Magill time”—a leisurely lunch, then a slow snoop at the Salvos, then the bookshop, and still time to do the grocery shopping before we pick up my son from his guitar-making workshop.

However, for my son, “Magill time” doesn’t exist. For him, the time spent on his craft vanishes into the sawdust—much like when I paint, I guess.

My son theorises that time is relative to age. When a person is young, say, one year old, they haven’t experienced much time so the time they have lived seems a long and drawn out. But for an eighty-year-old, one year is one of eighty and thus seems short in comparison.

I guess there’s something to be said that time is related to energy. Young people possess a greater amount of energy; they pack so much more into a day, and still don’t tire. Have you noticed, as you get older, young people speak faster? Or if you are younger, you wonder why older people speak so slow. What’s going on there? Young people complain about being bored and needing to fill in each minute of the day, so as not to waste time. Screen time fills in the gaps when “nothing” is happening.

In contrast, I believe there is a phenomenon called “older people’s time”. I observed this with my aging relatives. They complain time speeds up, but from my point of view they are just slowing down. They compensate for their slow movement in time, by preparing in advance for events, and arriving early so as not to miss out. It’s not unusual for the older generation to arrive at a venue an hour early so as to be on time.

Now that we have reached that golden age, Hubby still needs to learn this skill. Just fifteen minutes late to a rendezvous with the younger relatives today, and poof, they were off. Never caught up to them. They must have been doing a cracking pace, while we (or should I say, I) ambled to the first falls at a “knee-cracking” pace, what with my dodgy knee and my wonderful kind hubby keeping me company.

And in contrast to their youth, older people prefer to sit for hours pondering, their memories perusing their past. For them, days blend together, years vanish into a succession of Christmases. ‘Oh, dear, how time has flown,’ they say. Some think they’ve lived so long, they experienced the pre-Industrial Revolution. Not sure what’s going on there.

How does this relate to writing a story? Well, pacing comes to mind. I have observed that the younger generation enjoy a faster pace, many characters all interacting. I’m amazed at how they keep track of so many characters.

Meanwhile, as we age, we savour a slower, gentler pace. Time to breathe between the dramas and crisis in a story. And as for characters, it’s fair to say, from my experience with the older and wiser of us, we appreciate a character list if a book has too many characters.

Also, when planning a story, or novel, a timeline is helpful to avoid timing issues and plot holes.

So, after a busy day hiking (or hobbling in my case), then finally meeting the Swiss relatives for dinner, it’s time to say “goodnight”.

© Lee-Anne Marie Kling 2016; updated 2020; 2023

Feature Photo: Seacliff Sunset © L.M. Kling 2017 (or some such time)

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