Back in March 2010 I scribbled a post on my old joebrown blog about ‘losing’ a day. That article was about ‘perceived’ reality. Latterly, I’ve been reminded again, just how much I attempt to cram into my llfe, and the effects of doing so. A (still unfinished) tale now occupies over 200 pages of A4, and is chock full of ‘encounters’, spread over a period of several weeks.

The ‘timeline’ has to be correct, and I discovered a few days ago, I’d managed to ‘accelerate’ time and moved forward in the tale by one whole day.
The painstaking effort to ascertain the ‘problem’, and further how to ‘solve’ it, has meant some considerable time being spent – again, ‘robbing’ me of time.

I remembered the old blog, from a small collection of ‘The Occasional Diarist’ tales I had written. In this case the missive was named ‘The Revenge of The Time Bandits’. That the said ‘Bandits’ read my blog and simply waited patiently to ‘punish’ me is unlikely, but it is interesting that I have manifested my lack of grip over time in a work of fiction, as well as my ‘outages’ in real life.

I believe I have a solution, I won’t say what it is, which may spoil the story for you when it is published, should you read it.

The ‘old’ Time Bandits missive follows:

Tuesday March 16th 2010
I’ve been robbed! I’ve been robbed of one of the things most dear to me, of which I have only a finite amount left – a day!

Trouble is I’m still trying to work out which day has been stolen, as I only discovered the loss yesterday. I spent most of yesterday assuming it was Sunday 14th March, and only started to suspect something was wrong when reviewing the TV menu early evening, I saw that EastEnders was on at 8.00pm, but more importantly CSI Sunday on Five USA had apparently been cancelled. A check of the date on my PC confirmed my suspicions – a day had definitely gone AWOL.

I spent some time last night wandering around the house trying to recall what day I had carried out which tasks, but sadly I’m none the wiser. Fact is, extensive re-modelling of my office has been done and other than that, (which was well overdue) I can see precious little else in the way of achievements.

I tried re-constructing backwards in time, but this is so counter-intuitive to me I gave it up as a bad job. So I started with what I remember about the beginning of the week.

Now on Sunday (the 7th) I had to miss a concert at the Sage because of severe instability in my spine. Monday saw things getting worse with almost no respite from spinal spasms. I thought it couldn’t get worse, but Tuesday saw me finally being ferried to an emergency appointment at the Doctor’s surgery, because almost every movement caused me to grunt, groan or curse – almost like a sufferer from Terret’s syndrome.

My GP prescribed Morphine for the pain and Diazepam to help alleviate the spinal muscle spasms, and I have to admit that by 9.00 pm in the evening, things were bearable, and I had some mobility back without uttering profanities at each step.

I had made my mind up that whilst taking the narcotics, as well as not driving my car, I shouldn’t write any code either, as this would be probably write-only, (can’t understand it later) bugged beyond belief, and would probably have to be binned at a later date because it was deeply flawed. Not that any of the code is to control an Airbus, a Toyota car, or a Linear Accelerator mind, but it will be controlling stepper-motors in a CNC machine, so I have postponed working on it for now.

So instead of anything cerebral, I set about re-vamping the workshop/office. This has now become an annual task, as I re-factor the positions of equipment, wiring runs etc., so as to correct the infamous stove-pipe anti-pattern that the workshop/office becomes as it evolves to suit new projects/requirements.

Well, that was the intention anyway. Trouble is I’ve spent quite a long time sleeping. My 20-minute siestas had become 2-3 hours, and even awake I felt woozy – but pleasantly so, in a laid-back, what-the-hell way. Towards the end of the week (or what I thought was the end of the week) my back felt much better, and I reduced the doseage of both the Diazepam and Morphine, then the day following stopped taking them altogether and went back to my normal muscle-relaxant and analgesia products.

Somewhere in the middle of the above, the time bandits took advantage of my relaxed guard and crept in and stole a day.

Now I’ve double-checked both leaflets supplied with the medication, and there is no mention of any side-effects regarding time-bandit attacks. Perhaps this is a rare occurrence, perhaps the drug manufacturers don’t want to admit liability for time loss, or perhaps I needed the sleep? I suspect we’ll never know.

Belief in Divine Intervention shown to be worthless, so I’ve done this stuff myself.