It’s less than four weeks until the Winter Solstice.

Time is a very strange thing nowadays. The years are flashing past at an alarming rate. We watched a film the other night [I cant remember what it was of course] and realised that it had been made about forty years ago. I could have sworn it was released very recently.

We have been back at the Manor now for over twenty years but it doesn’t seem that long. Then thinking back to my childhood and what twenty years would involve – the whole path from baby through infant-hood, followed by years of schooling in various establishments, through third level and finally into a full time career, that is one hell of a lot to cram into twenty years and at the time it seemed almost endless. I just cannot believe that I crammed so much living into the same time span we have been here.

At my last ophthalmologist’s visit she asked when I had last had an optician’s eye test. I told her that it must be three or four years. Yet when I made the appointment for last week’s visit I discovered that I had been to them last year. That came as a bit of a shock and once again time was playing tricks. Though on second thoughts that was probably a memory problem rather than a time one. I have a lot of those too.

So now we are thundering towards Christmas [yes, I know I avoid the word until the day arrives but bear with me] and now the commercial world is starting to gear up. It doesn’t seem that long since the baking basking days of summer. At the moment they are obsessed with Black Friday and Cyber Monday and have been for the last couple of weeks. Both “occasions” are an entirely fictitious inventions of the commercial world to persuade us to buy their tat and I’m not even sure when both “events” are supposed to happen, but soon they will suddenly switch to Christmas mode and we’ll be further mired in obsessive commercialism. I’m not bothered any more though as I know the next four weeks will flash past like a demented express.

I have to make an appointment to see the vet in the next few days. It’s coming up to time for Penny’s monthly injection.

I could have sworn we were there last week.