He is a quarter my age, has only just started shaving, and the lower right side of his back is formed of one part hope, two parts ignorance and three parts flexibility. Every thump of the splitter ringing through the wall announces that he hasn’t got the least idea what “tempus fugit” means, nor yet would he believe it if I told him. He will find out, of course, eventually, but I can confidently leave that business in the hands of time itself.
Of course, the only reason I was splitting wood was the onward march of time. For though it is still officially high summer, you would have to be blind not to notice that the tempus locomotive has crested the peak and is now gathering speed on the downhill run. The evenings are shortening, the akeake is festooned with seeds and the oak tree by the vicarage is already dropping acorns.
After six decades of using the word, I have this day discovered acorn is an Old English word which literally means oak corn, because it is the corn, the seed, the fruiting body the tree puts out when it senses that tempus fugit and autumn is on its way.
Then five minutes ago I went to the kitchen to make tea, and while the kettle boiled I watched a pair of leaves go drifting, dancing past the window, and as they lilted down I heard them whisper “tempus fugit”.
The starlings and the sparrows have grown up. Only a few weeks back they came as chicks to the bird table, wearing fluff instead of feathers, hopping after their parents, fluttering their stubby little wings, opening wide their beaks and waiting to be fed. It was all very coochy-coo endearing, but tempus has put paid to coochy-coo endearing pretty damn quick. Childhood lasted a month for these chicks. The infant starlings have now acquired their spangly suits and are indistinguishable in appearance from mum and dad. Mum and dad, meanwhile, have disowned them, have forgotten indeed that they were ever mum and dad, and will compete with them for food as autumn fades into the cruel surprise of winter.
The starlings, clearly, have been reading Shakespeare.
“And nothing ‘gainst Time’s scythe can make defence,
Save breed...”
But they could have been reading any number of poets. Andrew Marvell, for example:
“But at my back I always hear,
Time’s winged chariot hurrying near.”
Or Robert Herrick:
“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may,
Old Time is still a-flying.”
Nothing new in any of this, of course. “We are time’s subjects,” said Lord Hastings in Henry IV. But, he might have added, some days it’s more obvious than others.