Time Runs

It's a really good year for milestone birthdays and anniversaries.  I'm wholeheartedly in favour of a special celebration every ten years.  I did a "Project 60" in the run up to my last "special birthday" and, although I've still got nearly four years before the first digit of my age changes again, I've started to think about Project 70.

But this post isn't supposed to be about me.  It's about my wonderful friends who have Golden Wedding Anniversaries or Very Special Birthdays this year.  Just before I was ill I went to a wonderful ninetieth birthday party for the mother of an old school friend.  She had a whale of a time.  I didn't give her a birthday present as I knew she would be inundated with flowers but instead I told her that some time before she is 91 she will get an Unbirthday Present.  She thought it was a wonderful idea!

I made the same promise to my friend Doreen who was eighty last month.  Sadly I wasn't feeling well enough to go to her birthday bash but sometime before she's 81 she will receive a bouquet on a day when she's least expecting it.  She loves the fact that she will have flowers at an odd time of the year and I have given her the gift of anticipation.

When I was a child my family celebrated each of my birthdays with a party,  cake and a lot of special fuss but these days milestone birthdays seem to come round as quickly as each birthday did before I was a teenager.  I want to finish this post with a poem by Henry Twells, a Victorian vicar.  He knew all about how time varies her speed.

Time's Paces

When as a child I laughed and wept, 

Time Crept 

 When as a youth I waxed more bold, 

Time Strolled 

 When I became a full-grown man 

Time Ran 

 When older still I daily grew, 

Time Flew 

 Soon I shall find, in passing on, 

Time Gone 

 O Christ, wilt thou have saved me then? 

 Amen.