Time

Going to New Zealand, even for just a week, gave me some time to reflect. Holidays always do that for me, which is one of the reasons I love them so much. Away from the everyday concerns and occupations, my mind has the opportunity to focus back in on what's really going on, what's at the core. There are changes afoot for me and not only changes on how I spend my time. I am changing how I look at that time and how I look at myself.

Time to stop marking time and wasting time - time to really get as much as I can out of life. And that doesn't necessarily mean taking up skydiving or bungee jumping, but rather just finding real, simple contentment in every moment and if that isn't there, then stopping to ask why and trying to do something about it.

I'll keep you posted.

Because, after all, we can't all be Timelords, able to travel back and forth through time at will! I am completely loving the re-runs of Dr Who on the telly at the moment, with Christopher Ecclestone as The Doctor. I didn't really warm to him first time around but I'm liking his no-nonsense style very much now. This episode, in which his sidekick Rose Tyler intervenes in her father's death and causes all sorts of time-y problems, played right into my long-standing love of all things time travel.

Time Traveller

We have had a hard rubbish collection in our area this week. These collections only come around bi-annually and they're a very good opportunity for you to get out onto the curb anything that's been cluttering up your house/garage/yard for the last six months. By the time the council trucks arrive though, there really is just rubbish (that is, of the icky old mattress variety). The weekend prior to the collection, trucks, mini-vans and four-wheel-drives circle the area, vehicles stop, people leap out, inspect what you've left on the grass, take what they think they can use and drive off again. Some people even come prepared with tool kits to loosen parts from your old fridge/dishwasher/electric fan to use on theirs. We put out an old fridge - with the door removed as is mandatory - and someone took the fridge but not the door. Hmmm. One man's meat, as the saying goes. It's a lot like op-shopping. Everyone has their own use for something. Everyone sees these discarded objects in their own way.

While we were deciding what to throw out, we re-discovered my grandfather's prized radiogram. Made in 1966, it picked up only AM stations, but being a modern machine, it does have an inbuilt record player. I am rather shamefaced to admit that we had left it languishing in the driveway, under the protection of the car-port. We simply couldn't see where we could put it when we first moved in. But now, dusted down and carefully polished, it has pride of place inside once more. It's not working at the moment, so we'll have to get that sorted out. But what I want to know is, when we do get it fixed, will it still be 1966 inside that radio?