Don't let precious time slip through your hands

But nippy though it may have been, the sun was out, and from here on in, the temperatures are only heading one way. And given the looming threat of more lockdown restrictions, this could be the last chance we get this year to enjoy the sunshine. You have to seize these opportunities while you can.

Last month marked my 25-year anniversary with this newspaper. Nothing particularly special in that, there are many fine people here who have served considerably longer, and achieved far more, but it did make me stop to consider how quickly the time had gone. One minute you're a thrusting young hack wondering what the future holds, the next you're a misanthropic cynic, wondering where it all went. Actually, I was always a misanthropic cynic, but I have spent the past quarter of a century fine-tuning these skills to a level I could never have dreamed of back then. Which, I guess, has sort of answered my original question about what the future would hold.

But where do the years go? Well, when you drill down the numbers, you start to find we don't have quite as many of them as we like to think.

On average, we are expected to live for 79 years, or about 692,040 hours. Being a man, and having an aversion to salads, we probably need to shave three years off that, so that takes us down to 665,760. And given that the first four years, or 35,040 hours, are a bit of a blur, just eating rusks, soiling your nappy and learning to read, we should probably chalk them off too, leaving 630,720 hours left. Then there's three years at university – which for today's youngsters seem to involve paying nine grand to be locked in your room by the Covid wardens, waiting for food parcels to arrive – so that's 26,280 gone, taking us to 604,440.

According to American research, we spend an average of 7.8 hours a day sleeping, and 8.8 hours at work, which leaves us with 186,556 hours to ourselves. Now I'm pretty sure I don't spend 7.8 hours a day kipping, more like five or six on a weekday, but the downside to that is it probably shaves another couple of years of my life expectancy, so it's swings and roundabouts really.

But the average Briton also spends an average of 221 hours a year driving to and from work, so over a 50-year career, that's another 11,050 hours gone. We also spend an average of 1.8 hours a day on household chores, so that's another 5,875 hours lost, taking us to 169,631. Meaning we actually live for about 19 years four months. So I really died about 30 years ago.

And remember, that's before we get to all the time wasted. The time stuck behind temporary traffic lights, because someone is fixing a pothole, time spent queuing at the bank, filling up with petrol, or arguing with those stupid voice-activated phone systems when you try to pay your bills. How many hours do we spend listening to hold music, while being told our call is really important? How many years of our lives to we lose negotiating plodding bureaucracy? How many months are being stolen from us by those temporary speed limits on the motorway, because a couple of hours earlier somebody dropped a crisp packet?

At this point, I'm pretty sure that at least one person will have got their calculator out trying to find a hole in my figures or questioning my methodology. To which I say: please don't.

Not for my sake, I'm paid to take the brickbats, and besides, I actually quite enjoy it. But please put your calculator away for your own sake. Because time is scarce and far too precious to waste quibbling about whether I have taken weekends into account (I have) or whether a 50-year career is still the norm.

With so little real time on our hands, we all need to squeeze the last drop out of every waking moment, we need to get out their like our hair is on fire, and spend every second doing stuff we actually enjoy. Like sitting outside a bar in Broadway drinking Donnington's Gold.

I hope that also extends to the minutes you have spent reading this column.