{"id":13738,"date":"2018-08-25T20:02:29","date_gmt":"2018-08-26T00:02:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=13738"},"modified":"2018-08-25T20:02:29","modified_gmt":"2018-08-26T00:02:29","slug":"time-flies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=13738","title":{"rendered":"Time flies"},"content":{"rendered":"<hr>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/passport001.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1000\" height=\"747\" src=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/passport001.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-13739\" srcset=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/passport001.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/passport001-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/08\/passport001-768x574.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>While retrieving my passport from the lock box, I flipped through all my old passports. There are five passports altogether. It was in April 1984, I was reminded, that I made my first trip to the United Kingdom, including my first trip to Scotland. What a trip that was!<\/p>\n<p>At the time, I had a Welsh friend, now deceased, who was a solicitor practicing in London. He was a political wonk, and though he was descended from Welsh coal miners and felt guilty about it, he was a supporter of Margaret Thatcher. He had requested tickets from his member of Parliament, and we attended the Prime Minister&#8217;s question day in the House of Commons, with rather amazing seats in the Sergeant at Arms&#8217; private box. Somewhere in my archives I still have the front page of the next morning&#8217;s Times of London. The newspaper would supply the political context, controversial at the time, which I have forgotten. But I will never forget the most dramatic line of the day. A member of the opposition party asked the Prime Minister a long and hostile question. Mrs. Thatcher&#8217;s reply was very short a brought a round of laughter: &#8220;I do not speak for Mr. Haig.&#8221; I can almost still hear her voice.<\/p>\n<p>My upcoming trip to Scotland will be only my second trip to Scotland. I&#8217;ll be in Edinburgh and the isles of Mull, Ulva, and Gometra. I have enough memory cards for about 2,500 photos. When I return, I&#8217;ll be at risk of boring you all with Scotland posts. I probably will not be able to post while traveling, because I&#8217;m taking a bare minimum of electronics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>While retrieving my passport from the lock box, I flipped through all my old passports. There are five passports altogether. It was in April 1984, I was reminded, that I made my first trip to the United Kingdom, including my first trip to Scotland. What a trip that was! At the time, I had a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/?p=13738\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Time flies&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-way-we-were"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=13738"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13743,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13738\/revisions\/13743"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=13738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=13738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/acornabbey.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=13738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}