The last time I tried, it took google 0.46 seconds to find me over five billion results for the search term 'time'. The first entry: Time.is – exact time, any time zone: 7 million locations, 44 languages, synchronized with atomic clock time.

The last time I looked it up, the first entry for 'time' in my dictionary read: [mass noun] the indefinite continued progress of existence and events in the past, present, and future regarded as a whole.

It never stops, does it? Tick tock, slip and run. All you can do is chase, race, catch it and hold on tight. Except it never stops, does it? Tick tock, slip and run. It leaps and creeps, it marches on and on and all you can do is run to keep up; snatch what you can of it; make sure you're in the nick of it; try not to let it shimmer through your fingers like so much water. It never stops, does it? Tick tock, slip and run.
 

When what you need to do takes time; when what you need to do is almost invisible; when what you need to do is hard to explain, you might need to think big.

Consider a spectacle – huge, beautiful, magical, visible: acrobats and fireworks; drama and dancing; laughter and held breaths; the streets lit gold. Something to hold onto, to point at, to photograph. Something unforgettable.

It can buy you time for the smaller things: a cup of tea with someone who’s never much bothered with art; a three hour meeting to find the right question; time spent listening.

I want to meet face to face. I know the difference it makes to arrive with a smile and a handshake – yes to tea, milk and two sugars, thank you; a face and a body instead of a voice squashed thin by the phone. Except I have no car, and time is an issue – the buses like fickle angels refusing to appear. So much landscape between here and there. Is it worth it?