Time Rich
Dear friend,
It’s been a day of heat and dust at home. Yesterday scaffolders took down a fairly massive structure from the front of our home, down and through our kitchen and put the structure up again at the back, taking good care not to damage the wisteria.
Nigel runs the team.
He was spoken of with slightly hushed tones by the others and I learn from them that Nigel’s strength and temper are legendary. I’m half wondering if he might be a kid I looked after when he was four and expelled from primary school.
On his first day at the referral unit, the kid I’m thinking of hospitalised one of his teachers with a stunning backwards head but which became his signature move over the time we got to know each other. At the time I was into martial arts and so my successful dodgings of the kid’s deadly fosbury flops built up a bond of respect between us. I respected he was not to be taken for granted and he was relived to be around someone who could get out of the way when his temper shorted.
He was a sweet kid who would explode with anger, hurt anyone who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and then sob his little heart out and apologise like a boy many more years advanced than his four years. His mum was fourteen when she had him and you never saw her at the unit. It was always his foster mum.
Lots of the kids we worked with just didn’t feel safe.
I thought for an outside chance how amazing it would be for Nigel to be the kid and to say hi.
But Nigel seemed genuinely pleased I asked and he softened on me a bit forgiving me at least partway for the hard time I gave him earlier about minding the wisteria.
I’ll go face to face with anyone in the interests of our plants, Chiara gets really sad if anything bad happens to anyone, plants are no exception.
One of the guys told me how emotionally taxing scaffolding is. People get fatigued and get shouty with each other. He said some scaffolders rely on aggression to get through the pain barrier, pushing through exhaustion. I’m thinking they’d be better if they were given a workload that meant they didn’t have to go at it like a military sprint—unless they actually wanted to for some reason they liked the idea of.
The guy told me how he learned breathing techniques to cope after a panic attack and how he taught his daughter it also and how it ought to be taught to everyone.
Today when the roofers took over they showered themselves and the neighbourhood with one hundred and sixteen-year-old cement from our crumbly chimney stacks.
They’re making them good for another hundred years.
In one hundred years here’s what the roofers will see from our old roof:
People will be time rich.
Why would you do it any other way?
in one hundred years, no more time poverty.
Time to grow and learn and explore and rest and look after yourself and the world and the earth and connect with life on a planet at peace with itself.
It’s as good as any other vision for the future. .
Just for now thinking about time rich and what that means.
For example, a young guy today passed me on his skateboard in the daytime in the sunshine playing loud rock ’n’ roll on a speaker. Time rich.
One of the customers at the canal café getting a new mum a baby seat, me offering up the only table in the shade.
The lady said:
“Here you go,” manoeuvring the high chair in position next to the round metal fold-up table, “I’ve got one of my own,” she says, nodding at the baby. “He’s fifty years old!” she laughs and so do I, but the mum and her friend are a bit taken off guard and don’t know how to respond.
I could go on.
Time rich doesn’t make your day any less epic.
It makes it more so—having time to stand and stare.
Maybe the poem would be a nice way to finish.
The ways we measure ourselves often tends to miss the splendid person our friends can see.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mikey