This weekend's engagement question in the Weekend Community asks us about time. In some ways there's an irony about that as I rush to smash out a post on a Monday as I didn't have time on the weekend to do so - thanks @galenkp for making the challenge go til Monday. For some reading this, you've only just woken up on Monday morning. Australia's ahead in time (whilst quite backwards in other regards) which always freaks people out on the blockchain.

I found these questions quite intriguing to talk about, so couldn't choose one in particular. Instead, I try to address them all.

🕥 What age would you like to be if you had the ability to choose a given point in your life, past or future, and why?

42. It's the meaning of life, according to Douglas Adams. I can't actually remember what happened at 42, except me saying to my girlfriend that I was going to be 42 in a month, and she said, no, you're only going to be 41. I'd spent the whole year thinking that I was 42 and it wasn't that bad, so living it again was kinda cool. I was also super fit, having done a lot of Bikram yoga, and Dad was still well. Saying that, I'd like to be 42, and not be working in the way I was, as I was heading toward a nervous breakdown. I just like 42 because I was super fit, and didn't have all the worries of my youth. I was feeling pretty strong and good about myself. Mind you I am loving being 50 right now as well, which is only eight years on. I'm just not as fit.

🕘 Stop time - If you had the ability to stop time (and remain there) which year, moment, event or era would you choose, and why?

Probably when I first met my husband and moved to the UK to be with him. Ours was a love at first sight story - we met at a party and were joined at the hip straight away. I went home, packed up my stuff in Australia, and got back to the UK two months later, where we moved in together. We were so giddy in love and everything felt golden. We didn't feel the weight of the years or the responsibility for others that was rushing at us. We were full of wonder and joy and spent a lot of time foraging and creating a home, exploring the woods and hills and just being in love. Did I say we were in love? I mean, we still are, but that honeymoon phase is pretty darn awesome. We lived in a lovely tiny hamlet on some land in Dorset - a very beautiful place to be. I loved it so much. We got married up the road. Whenever I think of those times I just feel happy. We lived about 200 yards from this beautiful chalk stream where we'd sit under the oak in the evening and chat. In the summer I'd swim in there or we'd sit in there and drink cider.

And I loved living in the land of my ancestors, too. It felt like coming home, as if it was in my DNA or something. I connected so deeply to that landscape it felt like a spiritual experience. There was so much history in the landscape, from old iron age hill forts to quoits, stone circles and churches and castles, and the feeling I was treading land that my ancestors had walked for thousands of years before me. It was pretty powerful.

🕗 Fast forward - If you could fast forward over a particular year of your life so you didn't have to live it which would it be, and why?

Most of you know the answer to this one. I don't want to live through my father not being in the world. He's a good man and the world will be a poorer place without him. Currently, he's having Car-T cell therapy at the Peter Mac cancer centre in Melbourne, an incredible treatment that we have high hopes for. But still, parents do die. It's the contract we all make with life, to love and live deeply because we know that loss is coming. I know I'll have to live through this grief and I know it's going to be rough. But on the other hand, if I don't grieve my father, it means that I never had the opportunity to love him, and that would be no good at all. To grieve him so painfully will also be to honour him, so whilst in an ideal world it'll be passed already or not coming at all, I'm okay with it, really. Ya gotta do what ya gotta do, human beings all.

🕢 Slow or fast- have you ever wished time would move more slowly, or quickly? When and why?

People always tell you to treasure your kids whilst they're young, but you're so busy trying to survive life and the stresses of being a parent that often you don't saviour it as much as you should. I spent lots of quality time with my beautiful boy when he was little, including backpacking solo with him around Europe and Asia, but that time when they're little does go really fast. It's not so much that I wish it went slowly at the time though, just more that I could revisit that time and spend a long afternoon with him, just talking and playing and having fun. I miss my little boy. Now he's a big bearded man about to become a Dad. However, I can't really regret much. WE did have a good time together.

Today, however, I feel like crap because my cortisol levels are through the roof and all I want to do is be at home, or in the surf as it's pumping today. Time does seem to move fas when you're having fun and really, really slowly when you are supervising kids on an oval at lunchtime. Sigh.

i