Time and Tide

Time and tide wait for no man.  Them as don’t work while young will have to work as old people.

I was raised on all these aforisms, but it meant nothing much at all.  When you’re young time stretches before you, if not infinite a close facsimile thereof.

When my brother turned twenty five he wrote a rather fatuous poem about how half of his life had gone. Even then, from the height of my 15 or so years, I rolled my eyes at it.  Because after all, even in the village when I was younger the lif...