There is something very strange happening in the wild. The other day I heard birds twittering at 5-40 a.m. Today there was bird song at 4 a.m. Why are the birds suddenly singing in the pitch dark? Answers on a postcard please!

At present I can hear the children playing in the school playground across the road. Their shrilled and excited voices rise up into the sky and blend in with the birds chatter. The sky is full of happy sounds. It seems hard to imagine that these young kids will one day be old people which wither away and die. It makes me think how short and temporary this life of ours really is. It only seems as if it was five minutes ago that I was running around in a school playground myself. Yet, 50 years have gone by and what did I do with them. Time it seems to me is very much like money. You can have loads of it and when every penny is gone, you don’t seem to have very much to show for it. Time is a great commodity. Your boss hasn’t got enough of his own so he happy to buy some of yours. Once you retire you will have all your time to spend on yourself, or so you might think. There is and will always be someone staking a claim to your time. Your kids have a great deal more of it than you. However, they still demand bloody great chunks of your time. The phrase “there’s no time like the present” is very apt, because the past has gone, and the future is guaranteed to anybody. The present is all we have. Today is a blessing, and if tomorrow comes out way it’s a bonus. Well my time is up for today my friends so if I receive my bonus, I will be with you tomorrow.

Tom Glassey, on the banks of the Silverburn River.