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The passage of time: extraordinary. Some I knew at university were already married, with children on the way. Married at eighteen, some of these folk have children aged twenty-six. Some of them also married early and are already parents of children at primary school themselves.

My own timeline is confused, for the arrival of children came late for us. In the normal order, we would expect our eldest to be twenty by now, but that wasn’t to be. That first decade of marriage: so many tests, pushing everything back. I imagine we weren’t alone. All those hospital appointments and tears.

And yet here we are. Our second decade flew past, completely absorbed in raising children, and the late starting career. So it is that we suddenly discover we’re middle aged. How that happened: it’s a mystery. I can’t account for the passing of time at all. Thirty years have vanished just like that.

Time: both unfathomable and true