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WE'VE all heard of African Time. I like it. I have zero capacity for time management.

I used to think I had obsessive compulsive disorder, because I always have to put everything straight on my desk before I can start any work. But then I realised that I'm not obsessive compulsive, I'm just a procrastinator! The supremely lazy superhero. Just call me ProCrassTiNay-TOR!

"I'm going to save the world - but first I really need to straighten this stapler on my desk, and possibly rearrange my pencils into correct colour coordinated order?"

I am always late. It's a running joke, (though my wife?s no longer laughing). I had real trouble holding down a proper job because of it.

Some of you can relate. But according to Julian Barbour, in his book titled The End of Time, he writes, "The quantum universe is likely to be static. Motion and the apparent passage of time may be nothing but very well founded illusions." So relax, you're never actually late for work. You just might find it rather hard to explain why. Our perception of time changes constantly. Everyone agrees time speeds up as we get older.

We all remember those endless summers of our childhood, and recall how a school day seemed to last for over a week. Now that I'm over forty, the weekly supermarket shop seems to come round every other day! The most frightening indication of how quickly my life is zooming by is toothpaste.

"Another toothpaste tube already! Surely I only bought one last week?"

Then I find out my two-year-old has been using it to paint pictures inside the bathroom cupboard. Of course, our growing children are the best indicator of our fleeting existence. Children are like little hour glasses standing beside us, trickling the days of our lives away. Children aren't our future, they are our replacement.

The key to a long life? Adopt a midget. So why does time seem to speed up as we age?

There are many theories:

1. As your body slows down, everything else around you simply appears to move faster.

2. Time is relative. One year to a four-year-old boy is a quarter of his lifetime, so to him that year is a very long time. But for a forty-year-old, a quarter of his life is ten years, so a year just whizzes past.

3. We are no longer living in the moment, as we did as children. So we need major upheavals to force a pause in the forward motion of our lives.

It's these life-changing events that I examine in my show Feels Funny, which looks at why we need life's ups and downs to truly feel alive. My own theory is time is like standing on the tracks watching a train approaching from the horizon.

When you're young, time moves slowly and the train is an almost static dot in the distance.

But as you grow, the train gets nearer and appears to travel faster and faster. Time starts speeding up, just like the train, and soon it's rushing towards you, day by day, faster and faster, until finally?THUD. No more train. Unless of course it's a Spoornet, in which case you might live forever...

.Don't miss Mark Sampson's "Feels Funny" at the Masque Theatre, Muizenberg from 12-22 March. Tickets cost R55. Call (021) 788-1898 to make bookings. The show on Thursday, 13 March is a fundraiser for the Bay Primary School, Fish Hoek and Masakhane Educare Centre, Masiphumelele.

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