Fossgate Social, Fossgate. York

Coffee House: Fossgate Social, Fossgate, York

Drink: Latte

Cake: Tosca Cake

Time, Life & Stuff - The Theory of Everything. 

'Tis the time of year for the annual handing out of trophies at the BAFTAs, Grammys, Academy Awards etc. (Nice to see that Bob had a long chat at the Musicares Award night btw) A way of marking the passing of time and, especially for the recipients, a moment of heightened awareness of the 'now'

My pet saying (which I mainly quote to myself) is that 'even rocket science isn't rocket science'. Nothing is truly difficult when it comes to solving things, doing stuff which are intellectual rather than physical. Lots of physical stuff is hard of course. Which is why lots of us avoid it by jumping the hoops in school/university to get a job that means we minimise doing manual/hard work

Now answering questions related to the beginning of the universe and the relationship between time and space etc are truly hard to answer I would say and a few of the truly smart people such as Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawkins had or are having a good go at trying to answer the problem. For the rest of us it's just a question of navigating through this world and doing stuff along the way

You do hear people on occasions say things like 'time is precious', 'time flies', 'life's too short' etc but I reckon that our lives, ultimately the only measure of time, are way too long. If you go back far enough, people lived very short lives in terms of years. 30/40/50 maybe. As we've grown in numbers and organisation we've extended most people's lives up to 70/80/90 and the likelihood well beyond that later in the century. 

The danger is that life just stops being worthwhile after we've lived essentially a lifetime (of 50 or so years). We mainly keep moving on through it though because of our inbuilt need to survive, at any costs. I imagine it's almost impossible to commit suicide by drowning in a bucket of water for instance as some automatic response would fight back to save you. You see lots of people living truly miserable lives and it's amazing that they keep carrying on. It's heroic. Especially if they're helping others on the way. 

The other pet saying I have (not mine this time) is 'It's not the despair, it's the hope'. We just can't help being optimistic at some point. And that optimism makes us want to give it a go for a bit longer, because you never know. I'm still buying a Lotto ticket most weeks, because you never know. 

So, we have potentially a very long life to live and it'll be difficult to bail out early. So what's the trick to make it reasonably fulfilling and not feel utterly bored with it all for the last 20/30 years? 

Well, the first thing is to be reasonably healthy of course and not too destituted. Then I think it's about rebooting your time line regularly. As a longtime comic book fan (I fell in love with DC and then Marvel Comics in the early 60s) you get used to the concept of bringing new life into a character by tricks such as a new comic title, new origin, starting all over again with Year 1. It tends to work and brings new readers on board and it all goes on until the next reboot

I  think that's what we do all of the time in our own lives and I reckon the trick to making life feel fresh, interesting, worthwhile is to make sure that we don't leave it too long between reboots

I'm not suggesting that we all do a 'Reggie Perrin' on a regular basis, walk away from our old life and start anew. I have done that on a number of occasions and it is intoxicatingly invigorating but only doable in certain circumstances unless you are happy being seen as a complete selfish bastard. I did this on a regular basis in my early twenties, walking away from things I didn't want to do and more recently did it when I retired. I can't remember ever feeling better than I did when I left the office knowing I'd never need to work another day again

So there are a few big reboots per lifetime when there's a big change of direction but the key probably is to engineer smaller ones to bring a new view of the world and thereby restart the clock. 

With me there's been a few over the last few years - moving to York, getting back into music and, a biggy, meeting and marrying Ann. All smart moves I'd say :-)

Coffee - pretty fair. Cake - little bit disappointing. Aiming for a slightly better review than that of my life when I'm looking back at the end of all this