Roger Moroney says time has always driven so many things. Photo / NZME
Life is all about that thing on the wall that was invented I suspect because the thing in the garden was far too prone to seasonal disruption.
And the regular, unstoppable and, I daresay, cursed by the planners and schedulers throughout history … that thing called night-time.
A time when the sun goes to bed, and in doing so could put out an entire hemisphere's schedule of time.
Until dawn … for that was when the sundials could spark up again and tell us we had missed the appointment with the witch finder general at the local pyre or the goat slaughterer from down the road at number 67.
The sun told us the time … sort of.
Until some Swiss mathematician or fame-seeking bloke called Roley Exx or whatever designed a thing that had hands and ticked.
And told the time.
And people could buy one and put it on their walls and whatever nature, or the unfolding of daily dawns and dusks could try and throw at it, would always tell the time.
But only if you remembered to write down what time it needed to be wound up again.
In our house back in the time I learned how to read the time we had a grand old wooden clock with a pendulum, along with a couple of "very modern" ones that had a couple of large batteries in their hearts.
Dad had a wristwatch which he would wind up every second or third day for they were far too small to be able to put a battery in.
He often checked his watch and would remark "you have to keep an eye on the time".
Today, every computerised and technology-driven thing has timepieces attached, in the digital form of course.
Time has always driven so many things.
It drives working lives.
My first job was 8 till 4.30, with half an hour for lunch.
And dear me, on the occasions I dashed in lost for breath at 8.02 the expressions of those already on site bore the looks of daggers.
It was like that at high school.
If you arrived for morning assembly at three minutes past 9 then it was a sharp meeting with the deputy principal in his office at 3.05.
And god forbid if you dashed in breathlessly for that "appointment" at 3.07.
It did happen to me once … the late arrival for assembly and notice from the prefect manning the door to see the sheriff's deputy at 3.
But I completely forgot and … nothing happened.
I suspect the prefect assumed I had gone to be admonished and left it at that.
Such a thing would never happen in Japan, however (yes, time to go off on a slight tangent).
For I read recently about the driver of one of the bullet trains who became stricken with a stomach upset and had been forced to use the onboard toilet.
Rather than make a quick station stop he put the conductor in charge of the train for three minutes and did his business.
No issues … the train runs pretty much on auto anyway.
However, he had reduced the accelerator and that reduction in speed made the train one minute late, yep, just one minute, at the next station.
And that dreadful delay sparked an "official investigation".
I daresay in future his bosses, distraught at their train being one whole minute late, would insist that the driver, if he required a journey to the ablutions in future, could have one minute to do so.
Not a second more or a second less.
If he failed to comply with this instruction then he would be in serious … you know how it goes.
Crikey, if those lads in charge of the bullet train schedules ever visit Wellington and try and catch the 10.15 bus to Newtown they'll end up requiring intensive therapy.
They say time is the great healer, and I guess it is.
Unless you're a bullet train driver with the runs.
Roger Moroney is an award-winning journalist and observer of the slightly off-centre.