A decade ago Pullyman - aka Michael Cowin - was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, a condition that affects people in different ways. Michael discovered writing and Island Life is featuring some of his musings. Sometimes topical, sometimes nostalgic, read about life as seen through the eyes of Pullyman

At certain times in your short spell on Earth, you will be made aware of just how short that time really is.

Like, for instance, when you are waiting for one of your personal seasonal highlights to arrive.

It could be your birthday or Christmas Day or even the Sunday school picnic, time takes forever.

But if you’re like me and on your next birthday you will be 80, then time certainly does fly.

Eighty years old. It doesn’t seem all that long ago that if you got to 70 you’d had what they called a good innings. These days, being 80 is taken for granted.

However, I often wish that my brain would tell that to my body.

Of course every thing is relevant. Eighty years as a human on Earth is not even as long as a second in universal time.

That thought reminded me of an old Jewish tale that goes something like this:

A man goes into the desert to be near to God. After a while he speaks aloud: ’God, are you there? Can you hear me?’

’Yes my son, I am here, I can hear you,’ comes the reply.

’God, what is a million years to you?’

’My son, it is just like a minute.’

’God, what is a million pounds to you?’

’My son, it is just like a penny.’

’God, will you give me a penny?’

’Yes my son, in a minute.’

I’ve just heard the latest news on the coronavirus.

The speed that things are moving with that global disaster, I don’t think that it’s worth worrying about how long the prom is going take to finish.

It is Sunday morning, I’m sitting at a tidy desk and I’ve paid all my bills. My affairs, as they say, are in order.

But don’t we take things for granted? A few short weeks ago we would have been scanning the Sunday papers to decide where not to go on holiday, and now? Exactly.

So, what about it? What can we do?

We can’t go to the pub, as they’re all shut. We can’t go to church. No sport on TV.

I was thinking about painting a skull and crossbones on the scooter and offering to deliver prescriptions for the chemist. That’s no use as it looks like rain.

My mind was drifting in and out of gear and I was soon back to thinking about that huge milestone change many of us made in our lives, the move from Demesne Road to Ballakermeen High School.

I never really liked school, or more to the point, I never really liked what I had to do at school.

At Ballakermeen we were graded into classes according to ability but whoever had the job of sorting that out had mistaken my interests and included me in the top group.

The problem was that I wanted to be in the hut. The lads in the hut studied things like wood work, metal work and gardening.

One Pully lad who was a couple of years older than me had gone the full way and had become a time served joiner. His name was Peter and he worked for a well-known Douglas company.

Peter’s boss was a friend of my boss and over the years Peter had been employed to do a variety of tasks in our shop in Strand Street.

Peter had one peculiarity: his use of the word ’thing’.

A shake of the head and a suck of his teeth, followed by ’Hm, that’s a bit thing.’

A simple request would become ’have you seen thing’, or a health problem, ’the wife’s a bit thing today. If he was still here, you can be sure that he would have a ’thing’ or two to say about coronavirus.

I can picture him at his bench, carefully sharpening a chisel, and discussing the pandemic.

We have had forest fires, swarms of locusts, floods, droughts, hurricanes, famines, wars, riots, and global warming. You name it, we’ve had it.

He would pause in his task and look up and say, "Do you know, isn’t life thing?"