h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

One minute you're going for your first day at school, dressed in shorts and an enormous blazer, the next you're holding two tiny, tiny babies...and before you know it, those babies are off for their first day in High School.

Where does all the time go? Did I blink and miss something?

Yep. You did. It's all your fault.

My brain doesn't seem to work that way. My daughter got offered her place in University this morning. It seems a lifetime since I was offered mine. I can think of all the millions of things I've done since then.

By Berkeley's calculation, Gnomon is longer-lived already than the rest of us. Put together.

What bemuses me sometimes is how much of the short time we have we spend getting out of it.

That's why Alexander Frink invented his paper plane http://www.wintemper.com/andrew/alexanderfrink.mp3

I reckon there's more than one of him. He's a marvellous bunch of fellows!

What is the noun for a collection of Gnomons anyway?

Gnomon's Land.

I had the same kind of feeling this morning, when I read a posting from my cousin on Facebook, commenting on my new thumbnail pic (me, holding my new grandson on Sunday). Talking to a man my age whom I last saw when we were both childrenmakes you realise a lifetime has passed (almost) and yet, I remember our last meeting like it happened yesterday.

The paradoxical thing is it feels like such a short *and* a long time.

been there, Ed. Now I have two in Secondary school, and neither of them is one of the new ones. But I have to say, each year they do get more interesting which takes the nostalgic edge off it (I don't really like small children, either, which helps me to get it in perspective)

Little children are meant to be suffered