Title • time goes by

As I've got older I've noticed that time seems to have speeded up, which is a common enough experience I guess, but what I've also noticed recently is that I'm more acutely aware of things and events that mark its passing. A recent example was the death of Tony Hart. If you're not familiar with him, he had a long career in TV, but I remember him best from my childhood as the presenter of the hugely popular children's arts programme, Vision On: first broadcast in 1964.

When I was young, hearing that an old person had died was no big deal - they were old, and in the end, that's what happens to them. As you get older though, remembered people from your earlier years just seem like they should be there forever. Admittedly, I can't remember any actual episodes of Vision On, even though it ran until 1977 (at which point I was 14), but I do remember Tony Hart as a larger-than-life character, full of enthusiasm for his own art, the pictures that his viewers sent in to be displayed in "The Gallery", and life in general. In short, my reaction to his death was not, "yes, he was old" but rather "Tony Hart is dead? Surely not - he can't have been that old!". As it happens, he was 84 when he died, so from a purely practical point of view I guess he was.

Anyway, to explain why I'm mentioning all this ...

This is a shot of the emergency telephone outside the look-out station at Rossall Point, Fleetwood. When I last photographed it, back in September of 2007, the board behind the phone was green, and now its red. Admittedly, this has little or no intrinsic significance, but even only a few years ago I doubt that I would have noticed. Now though, when I walked past a few weekends ago with Craig, I was immediately struck by the change: which for me was sufficient reason to stop and take the shot - a small reminder that time and change go hand in hand.