It's Turtle Time

(I don't mean the TMNT. I didn't expect them to make a comeback after so many years - them and He-man. Why can't the more-than-meets-the-eye robots be on the weekend morning tv instead?)

This is 1 of 24 illustrations planned for J's little poem (a metaphor gone slightly mad). Surprise, it's called "Turtle Time".

Time crawls like a turtle to the dark sea in the evening -
It has laid eggies down in a deep hole we saw it digging -
We peer into the holes - find thousands and thousands of turtle eggs!
Dinner. Turtle eggs.



I am reminded of what J wrote many years ago only by how yawningly slow this past week has been. Ever since the June holidays started, the office has emptied out, leaving those of us still at work even more conscious of the sun outside the window (or the dark clouds...oh if only to laze in bed!); the teenager standing next to you in the train at 8.30am in her shorts & t-shirts, alighting at the next station for some fun; and teachers who are enjoying a month-long holiday because their students are taking the train at 8.30am to the beach instead of to school.

But time plays this trick on us: It is only when the hours and minutes crawl by that we are actually made conscious of their passing, wait and watch their procession. So that when it's gone, we realise the space - never to be recovered - that it has left behind. And only then do we ironically begin to lament: how time passes! who stole it? where has it gone? WHO pressed the fast forward button?