For those of you who aren’t currently employed as a Professor of Bob Dylan Studies at Harvard University - yes, there is such a thing - the lyric above comes from Dylan’s song You’re a big girl now..

And I’m sure that we’ve all experienced moments when we suddenly realise that seismic shifts in time are all but invisible until they jolt you from the humdrum monotony of everyday tasks and you realise that every sunrise is actually a reminder of your own mortality, and you should grab every opportunity that life affords you.

As Ian McCulloch of Echo and the Bunnymen sings on Nothing lasts forever: “I want it now, I want it now, don’t tell me that my ship is coming in, nothing comes to those who wait, time’s running out the door you’re running in.”

I had one of those moments recently. As I was winding the clocks in my flat forward to welcome in summertime, and it suddenly hit me that it only seemed like a week or so ago that I was knee deep in twisted sellotape and wrapping paper off-cuts, listening to Noddy Holder screaming his lungs out as Christmas approached. Three and a half months. Gone in the blink of an eye.

What had I done in those three and a half months? I couldn’t think of anything of particular importance, but between singing along with Noddy and then twirling the hands of the clocks around, 96 days had flashed by. Which got me thinking; how do we all actually fill our days as we plunge headlong towards the big sleep?

Well obviously, this all depends on who you are, where you are, what you believe, how much or how little control you have over events, and myriad other circumstances which dictate your very existence. Here are a few examples.

Donald Trump kicked off this week by throwing the entire globe into economic turmoil by imposing tariffs on every nation in the world. The Donald is so cripplingly in thrall to these tariffs, that he actually imposed them on territories which have no human populations and are home to seals and penguins (which presumably, export biscuits).

When quizzed about this, the US Commerce Secretary said that it was to “close loopholes”.

Maybe he should start with trying to close the hole in the President’s backside which he speaks through.

However, Trump is simply on a mission to show his dead father that he’s not the deadbeat that his dad always thought he was. He has never recovered from the trauma of being looked upon as a loser and will do anything which he thinks will rid himself of the shame. I’m sure his dad is looking down on him. Just like he did when he was alive.

Munther Abed is a Palestinian paramedic. On 23 March, he was in a convoy of ambulances and other emergency vehicles who were responding to reports of civilians having been shot and wounded by the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) just outside Rafah.

As the convoy approached in the dark, it came under fire from the IDF and in the subsequent aftermath, 15 of Munther’s colleagues were killed and buried in a mass grave along with their emergency vehicles. The IDF claimed that the vehicles had no emergency lights on and were harbouring Hamas operatives. Mobile phone footage of the convoy’s approach retrieved from one of the emergency workers killed, shows the claim about emergency lights to be false.

No Hamas operatives were found amongst the 15 dead. Munther was held and interrogated by the IDF for 15 hours before being released. He returned to work trying to save lives.

My own week has started fairly unspectacularly as always. I woke up needing coffee and am lucky enough to have some in the flat and the power with which to heat it up. 

I’m giving my friend Anna a lift to work and then I’ll call my mum and arrange to pick her up and go for some more coffee and her obligatory bacon roll. I’m on duty as my sister, who usually looks after her, is doing grandchildren’s stuff as it’s the school holidays.

After I take my mum home, I’ll try and catch up with domestic stuff but will no doubt put it off, walk along the Water of Leith, and then retire to the pub for a few beers and a nonsense talking session with my friends. Then it will be food, a bit of telly, and bed.

When I’ll suddenly remember I have a Leither article to write… ■