M.G.S. Magazine - July 1955

Time is a ruthless foe. How often have we heard those fateful words "Too late!" Too late for what? Perhaps only for the bus, perhaps too late to avert a terrible tragedy, or save a life.

Time is the inexorable enemy of youth, crushing and sweeping relentlessly away all the youthful hopes and dreams, so carefully cherished for so long, in the ever-flowing tide. How many laughing, fun-loving boys and girls have changed into old men and women, left numb and hopeless by the cruelty of-Time?

Time may have taken their sons and daughters away from them; it may have brought poverty and ruin.

Yet it is not so heartless to everyone. To some, indeed, it brings success and popularity, wealth, and the realisation that their own particular dreams have come true.

It may take people they love away from them, but it also heals the raw, aching gap in their heart, leaving only a tender memory.

Time alternates between a savage demon, intent upon destruction, and a loving mother, gently easing and healing hurts. When we are young children we do not notice these things. Life for us goes on as usual-school, home, pictures, bed; it is when we begin to grow older and wiser, our parents are snatched away from us by Death, which is, after all, Time in disguise, and we realise how our life has been written out beforehand and planned for us. And there is nothing we can do to alter it-we can only hope.

Time is irrevocable. A child going to the shops could be run over and killed. His distraught mother might cry, "If only I'd sent him three minutes earlier, this would never have happened." But she had not sent him three minutes earlier and it had happened.

Leaders of a country, when a great war has begun, might say, "If only So-and-So hadn't done this or said that, we wouldn't be in this war." If only………

In a way, Time is relative to size and situation. If one lived on a small, remote island with only a few other people, Time would not really matter. There would be a lifetime before one and few pressing problems to be solved within any certain time.

In the outside world, however, there are new plans for meetings with other countries' political and scientific representatives, conferences, bombs, inventions, discoveries, and numerous other things to be decided upon; and Time is the most important factor of all.

Again, when one is on holiday, or indulging in any pleasurable activities, Time seems to fly past, and all too soon it is time to go back to work, or school, But when one is at work, how slowly Time passes! Each interminable hour, day, week drags slowly by and the week-end seems never to come; and as soon as it has come, it has gone.

Time changes everything. It changes people, both body and mind; it changes buildings, clothes, methods of doing everyday things; all these alter year by year. Old buildings have crumbled away with decay, and have been partly rebuilt or knocked down altogether. New labour-saving machines have come, for every job.

We can look back into the past and think of what has happened in Time: how things have been invented, wildly acclaimed, then found to be useless; how other inventions have been improved and are now essential to every-day life. Yes Past and Present are close relations-but there still remains the, unpredictable Future. What will happen to us, to our friends, our enemies, and to the world itself? We can only wait and see.

Books, both possible and utterly fantastic, have been written, forecasting what life will be like in a hundred, three hundred or ten thousand years ahead. Look at the fantastic ones again! Are they so fantastic after all? Anything may happen: today we can only imagine, but what today is imagination may be true fact tomorrow.

Time is a "Book of Fate." Each day we read another page, and in the future we shall read chapter after chapter, until one day we shall read the finish of everything, those fateful words-THE END.

One night in January, when snow was on the ground, I awoke to hear the clang of a bell. I jumped out of bed and ran to the window. Outside, there was a great hullabullo. The riding school stables were on fire!

I hurriedly pulled on some outdoor clothes and went downstairs. Father and Mother were already standing at our gate. I joined them and we went nearer to the fire.

The stables were well ablaze, now, and we heard the frightened whinnying of the horses, the crackle of flames, the falling of timber, the shouting and screaming, and the hissing of the jets of water.

The scene was very frightening, yet beautiful and wonderful. The yellow, orange and blue flames cast flickering shadows on the already melting snow. The three red fire engines parked in a line and the black figures of firemen playing their hoses on the fire added excitement to the scene. Suddenly I heard a splintering of timber and the main door of the stables fell down. Four horses rushed out in panic and ran off to a cooling stream.

The fire was dying down now and streams of water, partly from the hoses and partly melted snow, ran down the gentle slope of the field.

I then went back to bed and when I passed by, early in the morning, there was nothing but a black, wet and smouldering ruin.

I arrived at my friend's flat and rang the bell. A very angry sounding voice called out, "Come in and be quick." I frowned as I knew that my friend was, as he would express it, "in the dumps." Plucking up my courage I went in. Before I quite realised what had happened, a book was hurled at me.

This was too much for me as I have a bad temper. "Look here! You invited me here; do you or do you not want to teach me to play the double bass?"

"Oh, it's you," he said. "Come over here; we might as well begin."

"First you must hold your bow right." He threw one across to me, carelessly.

"This will be fun," I thought. "I wonder…………"

"Here, stop dreaming while I show you how to hold your bow," my friend cut in sharply on my thoughts. "Look, like this."

"Like this?" I asked, gripping the bow firmly.

"No! not like a pen. No! that's worse. You look as if it's a razor you're holding. No! it's not a fork. Look, like this!" I began to dream again, but soon-"Come over here. I want to see if you could play it in a standing position. No, I thought you would be too small."

"Look here; you are smaller than I," I said, sharply.

"Stop grumbling and get on that stool," I was ordered. After getting on the stool I thought I should have a fit for he dropped the instrument, but after saying a few things that were not polite, he tried to show me how to hold the thing. I say "thing" because that was how I felt about it. "First, let that bit there rest on your shoulder. No! the left one, you cl-t; you can't bow with your left hand unless you're left-handed, and you're not."

This annoyed me more than anything else but I said nothing.

"However are you holding it? Keep your knees out of the way.

This is a double bass, not a cello. Now come on, get working."

This was the worst part of all. I tried to get a mellow note out of the instrument. After I had tried to play four different notes a groan from my teacher interrupted me. "What on earth are you doing?" I was asked sharply.

"I'll tell you," I retorted, propping the double bass against the wall and slipping off my stool; "I'm going home to practise the piano. At least that's in tune."

Suddenly there was a slipping noise and I found myself lying flat on the floor with the double bass on top of me. "Get this thing off me, for any sake," I gasped; "I'm sure you knew this would happen."

After I had managed to escape from under that "horrible object," as I put it, I stated bluntly that if ever I tried to learn to play a stringed instrument again it would be a Violin.

Whenever a passer-by hears grunting or scraping noises below street level, he nearly always stops and stands at the brink of the subterranean workshop. No one can define the particular fascination or attraction of a road working. Perhaps it is inquisitiveness, waiting for an unknown object to appear through the clay; perhaps to criticise spade-wielders, perhaps the smell of newly-turned soil or the likable, pungent odour of tar; perhaps it is the labourers themselves, perfect symbols of composure and honest toil, working quietly side by side.

The roadworker's job is often scorned, and its importance is underestimated by casual passers-by. They do not realise that this occupation is one of the necessities that keep life running smoothly in both cities and villages.

General opinion says that the attraction of a hole in the road is that British people love to see other people toiling in order to earn a living. Indeed, it is pleasant to stand and watch labourers working. As long as there are roads in Britain there will be critics who stand and watch.

Yesterday we saw Odling Village play the Slopton Nuts at Spelk wobbling. The game was played in a field about the size of a tennis court, with a seating capacity of a thousand. At one end of the field was a pole stuck in the ground; it was made of very elastic steel and was called a Spelk.

It was now time for the teams to start playing. There were six players to a side. The idea was to stand on your head and fire arrows at the Spelk. The Slopton Nuts had the first shot. If the arrows hit the Spelk, they made it wobble-hence the name Spelk wobbling.

When all the Slopton Nuts had had a shot it was the turn of Odling Village. The number of hits scored by each side was recorded. When both sides had had their turns, the whole process was repeated. In all, there were five rounds.

The game lasted about an hour, and in the end the Slopton Nuts won by five wobbles to four.

The day of the Cross-country run had arrived. The runners were Maddiman, Introbus, Chopp, Broadheadson, Layhen and How. The starter's gun roared and spurted acrid blue flame. Straight from the start Broadheadson led, with Chopp ten yards behind him. The track which they took was dry and dusty, and the scenery was magnificent. Halfway round, Layhen led and Maddiman was last, with Broadheadson third.

At the finish, Broadheadson was first, Chopp second, How third, Maddiman fourth, Layhen fifth and Introbus last.

The prize was a solid silver cup with a bottle of champagne in it. Broadheadson went up to receive it, shook hands with the Mayor and Mayoress, and came down the steps. All his friends patted him on the back as he walked towards the dressing room. He put the cup on the stand reserved for it. When he had dressed he came back for the cup, but it was gone.

The police were notified immediately and the hunt began. A little boy called Rooms had seen the thief and gave a fairly good description. He was a tall man with curly hair, thin, a fast runner and he had had the thumb of his left hand amputated.

The police looked in their files and found that the description was that of John Soames, wanted for robbery. Then the news came through that he was surrounded in a small hut. He defied the police until all his bullets were fired, then the police charged towards the hut. After breaking down the door they found Soames lying on the floor with a knife in his heart. He had committed suicide rather than be caught and hanged. The cup was there as well, untouched in the melee.

Later, Broadheadson remarked at home, "It's been a tough tussle, getting that cup."

These two lines kept running through my mind as I lay in bed, warm, comfortable, one winter morning. Someone had granted us a whole day's holiday from school, and I was determined to spend the laziest day of my life.

I had long been promising myself a really lazy day, with no one to 'natter' at me and nothing to do. Now it had come true. My brothers and sister were all getting up to prepare to go to school; my father had already gone to work; and mother was almost ready to go.

For another fifteen minutes I lay there listening to the noises of the village just wakening up. There was the clatter of shutters as old Mr. Smith, the sweet shop man, opened his window to let the children know that he was open and they could buy their morning sweets. There was the rumbling of iron wheels over cobble stones as Smirque, the ragman, set off to make his daily round of the villages. Just then I heard a cheerful whistling and recognised it as the little ditty Smith's boy was whistling as he went dashing off on his order bike. I smiled. "Late again, I suppose," I murmured as the sound of his whistling faded into the distance.

Suddenly the sound of raised voices jerked me back from my wandering dreams. It was the sound of Joe and his boys going to school. "Here's a bit of luck," said I, because I had not forgiven, or forgotten the jeers Joe and his mob gave me when they had a day's holiday. I sprang out of bed 3fld opened wide the window. "Ha! Ha! Ha! He! He! He!" laughed I through the window. "Are yo't1 going to school, Joe? You want to go to a decent school like ours."

"I wouldn't be seen dead at your school," retorted Joe, but it was plain he was envious. After a few more jeers I shut the window and lying back on my bed thought of all the things i was going to do. How I was going to enjoy this day's peace!

I dressed slowly, revelling in my laziness. Downstairs all was ready, breakfast laid, house tidied up and fire made. I ate my breakfast with relish; it had never tasted so nice.

After reading the headlines of the paper and browsing through the sports page, I was disturbed by a loud banging on the door. It was the errand boy from Gregson's, calling to say our parcel had arrived and would we fetch it immediately. After grumbling and groaning a bit I resigned myself to the task, and putting on my coat went down to Gregson's. Of course Gregson's would have to be the last shop at the other end of the village and I had to pass the railings round the yard of Joe's school. Remembering the jeers of the morning I tried to hurry past, but no, I was spotted, snowballs were made out of the dirty, hard snow that remained from Sunday's shower. I tried to run but I still received a heavy plastering. They were in school when I came back so I avoided another plastering and reached home safely.

As I closed the door I could sense something was wrong. It was. There she was, sitting in the best chair, in front of the fire, reading. It couldn't be,-It couldn't be,-but it was-Mrs. Johnstone from the cottage by the Plough. She, besides being one of Mother's friends, was the biggest bore, the miserablest old grumbler, and the laziest woman in the village. It appeared Mother had asked her, on her way to work, if she would mind going up to our house and keeping an eye on things. She did.

All the rest of the day I was on the hop, fetching coal, chopping wood, making tea, finding magazines and any other chore you could think of.

By four I was dog-tired and glad of a rest. She said she must go as she was expecting her nephew at four-thirty. The moment her back was turned and she was through the door I shut the door, bolted it, and recollected my thoughts of a lazy day. Never again; the laugh was on me, not Joe; I'll never stop at home again. "A lazy day, bah!"