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J B Priestley – Margin Released

There are two reasons why I have chosen to call this Part Three I Had the Time. First: during the past thirty years or so, hundreds of people have told me they could write a good novel, play, book of essays, if only they had the time. Well, I had the time.

The second reason goes deeper. Although we often feel we are outside our time, looking on and wondering, it is all we seem to possess with any certainty.

Whether we believe we are immortal spirits, here in exile for a season, or see ourselves as talking mammals, cleverer than any box of monkeys, almost ready to take confusion and despair to another planet, our time is all we have on earth.

For each one of us, in just so many hours, sunlight and opportunity vanish for ever. Fed with the necessary data, a computer could work it out in a flash. (Our great-grandchildren will probably be working for the computers: already some of our technologists are on their side, not on ours.)

Though there may be something left over, never realised, never fulfilled, never on sea or land, we are what we have done with our time.

We are, you might say, stuck with it.