I was sitting in one of my favourite restaurants this afternoon with Sara. Joan Armatrading was playing in the background. I suffered such a severe rush of nostalgia that I nearly got whiplash as I whipped back twenty years or more in time.
I was listening to her LP (we bought LPs then and not CDs), reading Jane Austin, drinking a generous portion of scotch, and generally drifting aimlessly through the weekends with time to spare. I was also addicted to T.S. Elliot, Keith Garret, rare glimpses of Sam Sheppard on the movie screen, and holding my wardrobe together with safety pins (not as a fashion statement, this was Way Before punk, but as a practical solution).
When did the term “spare time” last cross your lips? Seriously. When was the last time you actually had spare time?
They don’t even have a word for it in German. They have free time, which, if you know anything about anything, is not the same. Spare time is to be frivolously discarded, wasted, enjoyed or not enjoyed, depending on your mood of the moment. There is an element of timelessness about it. You learn what it is like to float in space while travelling in your spare time. Ok, this might be getting ridiculous because, obviously, I have never floated in space. So, the end.
P.S. For those that do not know, I am dyslexic and therefore don’t know how to spell names properly, let alone important masterful words. I am a slave to my spell-check program.
(This post is part of my "Growing Up & Growing Old" project.)
No comments:
Post a Comment