All the time in the world

Timing is this summer's zeitgeist

Zeitgeist means the spirit of the time – time in the sense of era - but I’m thinking of time as measured in minutes, days, and weeks:

• VP Kamala Harris’s 100-day presidential campaign (it’s not exactly 100 days – a common time measure – but just about). All the pundits agree that the timing works to her benefit, and that the frustrating sequence of events over the past 6 weeks actually turned out for the best. The countdown is on.

• The 16-year prison sentence given by Russian courts to 32-year-old Evan Gershkovich, who was released yesterday in a prisoner exchange.

• The nearly 6 years Paul Whelan spent in custody in Russia. (This hits home because I used to worry that something similar could happen to my son in China.)

• The record times being set at the Olympics in Paris.

• The 2-1/2 hours the average user worldwide spends on social media every day. (The figure for teenagers is twice that, or more.)

Paddington Station clock, London.

How many of us have resolved to spend less time on our phones? The simplest solution, it seems to me, is to make sure every room has a visible clock. If we depend on our phones to tell the time, we look at them all the time. Then we see those triggering red dots and other life-draining notifications, and 15 minutes disappears. I don’t have room for a grandfather clock but I love staying in houses with them, and mantel clocks are attractive. But my favorite are station clocks and there are many for sale at eBay (in fact, I may just have to buy another).

Talking to Carlos Moreno about the 15-minute city concept has got me thinking about how our beliefs about time shape our lives. “Time is money.” “Time is a flat circle.” “Having the time of our lives.” Kathy Giuffre, who gave us a look at the village pub in her Italian village, pointed out that spending time together - meals that lasted hours – reflects an Italian value, la dolce di niente, the sweetness of doing nothing. Moreno’s The 15-Minute City has two chapters about the history of timekeeping and urban time (New York, of course, is the city that never sleeps). He makes the point that it was railroads that made international timekeeping essential. They were an essential part of the industrial revolution, and had far-reaching effects on the way we live and work, too. But today, in a world dominated by cars, trains have become a key part of the transport transition.

The clock at Chelsea Market, New York.

The first chapter in my first book, Home Ecology, was about time. For a lark I recorded it recently. Here’s a passage from “The time of your life”:

Although we often quip that “time is money,” if every moment spent relaxing, playing with your children, or contemplating the ocean waves were a penny lost, every human activity could be quantified in terms of its monetary value. How much is your baby's smile worth, or a game of chess, or helping a 10‑year‑old with her math homework? How about a day spent decorating the house for Christmas, or an afternoon in bed with your beloved?

Money can sometimes buy time - by making it possible, for example, to hire someone to do a task you dislike or aren't good at - but the idea that time is money is misleading. People end up trapped by the need to finance a luxurious lifestyle and may in fact have far less free time than those who live more simply. E. F. Schumacher, the former Coal Board economist who became internationally renowned as author of Small Is Beautiful, economics as if people mattered, summed this up with what he called the first law of economics: "The amount of real leisure a society enjoys tends to be in inverse proportion to the amount of labor‑saving machinery it employs" - and, presumably, to the amount of money it has. In the same way, the more money a society has, the less real leisure time people enjoy.

It’s a mistake, however, to think (as the conspiracy folks do) that the “15-minute city” means an urban prison that you’re not allowed to leave. Moreno’s proximity revolution is about ease of access to the things we need routinely – work, shopping, schools. And he is well aware, as he explained in our podcast conversation, that different places have different densities and landscapes. The 30-minute region is also part of the picture.

This article by Diana Lind offers some useful thoughts about the benefits of commuting, and travel in general:

Research has shown that not only are more people spending more time at home since the pandemic, but they are exploring less of the cities they live in and mixing less with people from different economic classes. Many of us are getting less social interaction, particularly with “weak ties” — those casual acquaintances such as the neighbor who you run into at the bus stop or co-worker in a different department of your company. (And ironically, weak ties have been shown to be most beneficial to people in digital fields.)

Remote workers may even be missing out on the psychological benefits of the liminal space of commuting, which helps us transition between parts of the day. Whether or not we actually have the amenities befitting a 15-minute city, many of us are increasingly confined in our own neighborhoods unless we purposefully push ourselves out, and increasingly connect with people we already know there.

Read the rest.

This illustration of Guildford Town Hall caught my eye when I was organizing a bookcase. I pulled out a volume of a set called Recording Britain and looked for Guildford because I have good friends there and have walked that High Street many times. The set, consisting of “topographical water-colour drawings,” was commissioned by the Pilgrim Trust in 1939 to record buildings that were in danger of being destroyed during wartime.

Guildford Town Hall - Painting by G. W. Hooper 1941

The High Street of Guildford has been scarred by the war, but is still one of the handsomest in England. As early as 1588 a Town Hall existed, and part of it may be contained in the present building, which was erected on the same site in 1683.

A feature of the Hall is the heavy, projecting balcony, wit the great brackets of black oak, grotesquely carved, which support it. An even better-known feature is the clock, the story of which is told to every tourist. When the present Hall was in course of erection by public subscription, a travelling clockmaker named John Aylward south permission to set up business in the town. He was refused. Finding accommodation in the neighbourhood, he made the clock, and offered it as a gift to the townspeople. It was accepted, and the ban revoked; but whether a precedent was established or a practice followed the tourist is not told.

It was a bit like the Works Progress Administration (WPA) Depression-era projects in the US. But think what a bitter pill: knowing that precious, historical buildings were in harm’s way, along with the entire population. (Any novel written in Britain from that time into the 1950s is likely to refer to parents, children, friends, and spouses who died in bombing raids.) The wars of today, especially in Ukraine and Gaza, are equally destructive – has there been time and money for this kind of preservation?

Finally, with warm greetings, a look at the bees’ early morning visit to a newly opened lotus: