Richard Baum

2007 rolls to a close with alarming speed. It cannot, cannot, CAN NOT be a year since the last new year’s eve. And yet calendars and most leading scientists agree that it is. A bit like global warming - depressingly real despite me not wanting it to be.

And 2008 is upon us. Two thousand and eight. Ludicrously futuristic. We should all be armed with laser guns and be travelling around hyper-cities in the sky in our flying cars by now.

But of course it’ll all be much the same, and in about nine months I’ll be used to 2008, only for it to change to 2009 and fill me once again with the dreadful sense of foreboding that time is marching unstoppably on towards a year when I genuinely am a grown up, and from which no amount of backwards time counting can help me escape.

I thought once that I was the only one who counts backwards to escape the hideous reality of stuff creeping up on me. I used to do it with school holidays, starting gleefully with the knowledge that I’d had three days and still had eleven days left, then getting increasingly reliant on calculations such as “I’ve had 80% but that still leaves 20% which is actually more time left than a normal weekend, hooray!” And then even on the last day, clinging to hours and counting them down. “Think how much I did between 2pm and 4pm. And I’ve got til 8pm til I need to go to bed! Plenty of time…”

Now I do the same with time off work as well. All this week, in the quieter moments, I’ve been doing mental arithmetic to time precisely how much enjoyment I’ve got left in comparison to how much has gone, trying desperately to convince myself that the sneering nastiness of my 7am alarm call on Wednesday is still a long way off. Now, I am realising, it just isn’t. One more sleep and it’ll be tomorrow. And no amount of backwards time counting will get me out of it.

I do it with my age as well. I was born in 1981, which is very handy because I can say to myself that I’ve only actually lived through one entire decade, and therefore simply cannot be a grown up. The whole 1980s can be written off as nothing more than a long run-up to the start of my life. How could I have been expected to achieve as much as my 1979 friends? They’ve had a whole decade more than me! They were there when the 80s started, so they should’ve made something of it! Me? I just had the 90’s, and look what I did! By the time they ended I was at university and everything! The 79ers? They weren’t even at secondary school after their first full decade!

I think it might just be the stupidest thing I’ve ever written, but being born in 1981 really does give me some comfort. I won’t hit thirty until 2011. Not only is this actually three years off, but it is in an entirely new decade and therefore seems even further off. 2011 is so far in the distance that it just can’t actually ever arrive. 2011? Ah, we’ll all be dead by then. It’s miles away. Tomorrow, my 1979 friends are going to be 30 next year. Next year.

And every time they approach a milestone, it will be there looming on their horizon for years in advance. There’s no new decade to cast the illusion that it’s far away. I don’t know what the marital problem was that caused a four year delay from my parents getting hitched to having me. But whatever it was, I am grateful. Unless it’s hereditary…

My album of the year (for I am quite the music critic…) was John Mayer’s “Continuum.” It has a song on it called “Stop this train” which contains these lyrics.

Stop this train
I wanna get off
And go home again
I can’t take the speed it’s moving in
I know I can
But honestly, won’t someone stop this train?

Don’t know how else to say it
Don’t want to see my parents go
So I play the numbers game
To find a way to say that life has just begun

I don’t like quoting song lyrics, because they make me cringe. I have done so here not because I think they’re life affirming, but because I just need to explain my relief that I’m not the only one who’d like to sit time down over a nice dinner and see what kind of arrangement we can come to about slowing things down a bit. I’d probably burn his vegetables just to illustrate my point.

The song carries on to explain that it is both impossible and unwise to get off the train. But I’m not too keen on that bit, since it doesn’t allow me to wallow in my own opinions.

But just to hear that someone else is as ludicrously self-absorbed as I am, who contemplates time itself coming to heel at his command, and yet still has enough gumption to make a record, is an enormous relief.

And it is surely no coincidence that John Mayer turned 30 this year…

Happy New Year all.

Rick