Time Travelling-We moved to Italy when my partner got a job offer she couldn’t refuse. My freelance life meant I could move with her, providing I was prepared to keep on moving – back and forth across Europe (I have my green guilt, I admit, and have done my best to offset, but faced with the choice between Lea and Gaia, I chose Lea). 

Back and forth, back and forth, across countries, cultures, climates. 

Time works for me – I can get up an hour later at home in Italy and still appear to be bright and early with my emails to England. 

I catch the 7 o’clock flight from Italy and somehow lose an hour in mid-air so I am at my desk before 9.30… 

Time works against me, parcelling out my two quite separate lives it seems. The comfort, peace, passion of my time in Italy; hitting the ground running in England, I dart off the plane and into a whirl of advocacy, office politics, catching up with friends. 

Time is compressed in England, elongated in Italy. In England I rush to get through, in Italy I draw out each moment. Am I doubling the quality of my life, or halving it? Can Lea really understand? For her I have slipped out for a few short days when she has been free to watch X Factor in the evenings without my grumbling. Yet I feel as if I have been gone a week, a month, a year…

Time is absolute and infinitely malleable. The paradox of our lives: every second more marks a second less, The minutes drag during a dull meeting, tumble toward the end of an exam. Some of my Saturday mornings will last for an eternity while whole working weeks have been lost… some working weeks will last forever, while whole weekends…

Counting us, holding us accountable, our time is not linear but three, maybe four, dimensional; indivisible from who we are, like our heart – the clock of our heart, beating with us through the fragmentary, irregular journey of our lives, time travellers all.