LONDON LETTER JUNE 2018:



TRAVEL AND TIME 


 I currently do not have a passport, my British passport is up for renewal, though since I am eligible for an Irish passport should I obtain another it will, because of Brexit, be issued from Dublin. Passports are weighty icons and people invest them with extraordinary symbolism. True, to be denied one is no small thing, as the appalling Windrush affair has so grotesquely illustrated. Still, this iconic investment is strange, as AJP Taylor observes in his history of Britain 1914 to 1945 prior to 1914 British subjects could travel across the continent passport-free. The introduction of passports was the first step in curtailing this freedom. Now significant numbers of the British public it seems are happy to have their freedom of movement again curtailed in the belief, erroneously as it happens, that only this will allow us to change the colour of these little documents. As I say, strange indeed.


As it happens I currently have neither the funds or, more importantly, a particularly strong desire to travel. I did once travel quite considerably and, these days to do so, given how cheaply even long distance journeys can be obtained, means[i] that the effort, energy and upheaval involved in serious travel[ii] only require enough desire to be on the move for these to be overcome.  

Not travelling in space is not the same, of course, as standing still. We are all travelling in time, though not, I increasingly suspect, at the same speed. Time has always held a fascination for me. I remember one morning in 1972, walking to work and suddenly being alarmed at the speed I was being propelled into the future. A rather morbid fear for a 16yr old. Still, I think I was right to be concerned. The clock is constantly ticking and it’s always later than you think. This inexorability is perfectly captured by MacNeice in ‘Slow Starter.’

‘Who said a watched clock never moves?
Look at it now. Your chance was I.
   He turned and saw the accusing clock
   Race like a torrent round a rock.’


Any consideration of the nature of time is never far away from an interest in time travel. Though I was rather astonished to find, courtesy of ‘Time Travel’ by James Gleick, that this is only a very recent phenomenon, dating from HG Wells short story ‘The Time Machine.’ This does not mean that people were not interested in the passage of time prior to this, myths about ‘fountains of eternal youth’ proliferated, merely that the thought of gadding about backwards and forwards through time had not occurred to them. These thoughts are surely a consequence of the technological advances of the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Everything, no matter how fantastic, came to be viewed as being, at least hypothetically, possible.  
The link between the desire to traverse time and fountains of eternal youth seems clear, both involve cheating time and, of course by inference, cheating death. Time is the least substantial and mysterious and maddening of phenomenon. Every moment we experience the solid and seemingly concrete dissolve into a vapour that we call history. When I read this back to correct and to edit the moment of first writing down these words will have the same substance and solidity as the battle of Waterloo.  
 I am in fact currently writing a short story about time travel, however, in this, I have approached the subject from a metaphysical rather than technological angle. (Watch this space).

Few things have a greater capacity to send thoughts and sensations travelling back in time, with the possible exception of taste and smell, than music. I have been listening to an Album, ‘Captain Fantastic and The Brown Dirt Cowboy’ by Elton John. There is a track,  ‘We All Fall in Love Sometimes,' on it which, precisely because I have not heard it since - each hearing always dilutes a songs capacity to regurgitate memory, - has brought memories flooding back. I find a sadness about the song which the accompanying guitar strongly enhances, it pierces the soul.
 Of the Elton John albums purchased during that period I only ever played one or two tracks. A great deal of his material leaving me cold. Still, the tracks that did hit home hit home hard and listening to them again they surely deserve the epithet ‘timeless.’

Sunshine and there has been plenty of it, suits London and the numerous green spaces and parks feel like a serene oasis in the midst of a bustling city. That is where I am heading now.

AT June 2018  





[i] I speak here of people like myself, detached and free of serious ties and obligations.
[ii] As opposed to two weeks in the sun, though even this can involve some upheaval. 

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