Precious moments

Last weekend, I went to Buenos Aires: three nights and three-and-a-half days of talking, eating, drinking, laughing, sweating, dancing, shopping. Not too much sleeping. "Time was precious".

I managed to do a twenty-four-hour talkathon, spa-athon and drink-athon with a wonderful friend there. It's quite incredible when you grasp the time you have, yank it towards you and run with it until you can run no more. It's amazing what you can pack into a day when you know what little time there really is.

And something I realised when there was how well distribution of time can be spent. Two minutes with the man who used to sell me my paper every day was fabulously sufficient; five hours with my in-laws, eating and talking; ten minutes with my shoe-shine friend who worked on my street. All was enough.

People spend far too much time, time they don't have, on the people they don't really want to focus on. Through family, society, customs, we are often railroaded into spending our time with distant relatives, obnoxious colleagues, boring friends of friends. Really, it's not the time that becomes precious, but the people you spend it with. They should be the precious ones who make you feel fantastic, happy, understood.

It then doesn't matter how many seconds, hours and days you have to spare; if it's with the right people, the moments last a life time: every time you close your eyes, you are there.