ADDENDUM, WITH APOLOGIES TO EINSTEIN

"Hmmm..."

So, time slows down the faster you go. It occurs to me that I implied the opposite of that yesterday. You know, sometimes I wonder what's wrong with me.

However, I still maintain that your perception of time depends on your frame of reference. Einstein postulated that because the speed of light is a constant, it means that the way you perceive its speed changes relative to your own velocity - not because it changes, but because time does - it sort of slows itself down around you, dilating and ticking ever more slowly in your frame of reference.

Not, as I postulated, speeding up as the drinks trolley rolls by. In fact, time slows down so much that the passengers age more slowly. This produces the famous twin paradox, where it's possible for one twin to end up younger than the other. A further implication is of course, that if we ever work out how to travel faster than light, time won't only slow down to a stop, but it will actually start speeding up backwards. Or, as someone once put it...

Young Albert was terribly bright
And propelled himself faster than light
He set off one day
In a relative way
And he got back the previous night

So, does any of this explain why the weekend went by so quickly that I hardly noticed it? Not really, other than by the implication that if time dilates as you speed up, it also contracts as you slow down. There is a sort of logic to that as a theory for Mondays dragging on and on. After all, what slows you down like a pile of tasks and a billowing inbox?