TIME

Time is a funny thing. While someone is wishing time would pass quickly, another is hoping it will slow down.
Someone says "the week has flown by", while another says "gee this week is slow"

What is one or two extra minutes here and there? not a lot, but to a traveller they can mean the difference between making a connection, catching a train or remaining on the platform.

And what of a traveller stuck with one/two or more hours between connections? Oh tima passes so s.l.o.w.l.y, and even writting about time doesn't make it pass any quicker.

You tell yourself you have this long to wait, or this long before you will move to the platform/gate.

You look at your watch, two hours to go. Well less then that as that is when your form of transport leaves, so you have actually less then that before you can justify moving to the gate/platform.

What can you do, and how much can you do before you look at your watch again? what can you do to pass the time? make it go faster?. Like there is only so many times you can walk from one end of the station to the other, and having to carry you bags is a pain, and it only uses ten minutes anyway.

Eventually time ticks over and soon becomes one and a half hours, then one hour and that is more bearable. And when you factor in the time taken to walk (a small 5 minute walk) it makes it better still. You move somewhere else to wait, and five minutes has passed.

Ten minutes and you can say "one and a half hours to go" and that sounds a lot better then "one hour and 40 minutes". It sounds crazy, but it is amazing how your spirits lift with the difference in the block of time. Makes the wait more managable.

You figure to yourself you need five or ten minutes to find out the information you need on where to go. But you are fooling yourself as finding out the information isn't going to take as long as that, and the information you have known for awhile. Gained as a means to fill in time earlier on in the piece.

You may even have a time for when you are going to move somewhere else, where you will use up time getting there, but will just be waiting for time to pass somewhere else. You get excited becouse you are close to doing something, you look at your watch again. More time would have passed if you had reframed from doing that for five more minutes.

The closer you get to leaving, the harder it is not to keep checking the watch. But the time doesn't pass any faster becouse you are getting excited.

Checking depature boards, when you first arrive, you may not even be on the board, and you start at the bottom. Slowly you make your way to the top.

Somehow you manage to wait 2,3,4 or longer hours at the train station, or at the airport, and now you have maybe twelve hours to pass on a plane or a train. Oh fun. But at least you are moving and heading somewhere.