Time dilation
Jenny Randles asserts: “Accident victims, such as those in car crashes, [perceive] time stretching out… There are no such accounts from horse and cart accidents” [ FT359:31]. I dispute her conclusion that “varying perception of time postdates our ability to travel fast”. I myself have experienced time “slowing”, and often people describing accidents or witnessing traumatic occurrences refer to “that moment when time stands still”. I have frequently heard accounts featuring the phrase “when everything goes into slow motion”– pertaining to accidents involving, for example: garden machinery, carpentry tools, agricultural pursuits, ladders, slipping on hard surfaces, or during meals or washing up. I have also had first-hand accounts of this just as rioting or military assaults commence.
I myself and many people I know have felt this effect in relation to situations where the sensation of everything slowing meant I or they were uncharacteristically calm and focused in peril, and were able to escape/ minimise damage, or administer vital first aid. Time resuming normal pace, and shock/recognition of the severity of the situation, was always delayed. Recent examples: a horse panicked, threw a rider and bolted whilst tethered to four others on a busy main road. Myself and a tree surgeon with others on the verge had the distinct impression of time slowing and thus being able to contain the animals and prevent carnage.
An acquaintance felt “time slow remarkably” and felt “as if underwater” upon a serious (manual) saw injury. Many people report an almost identical experience just prior to fits, fainting and seizures. Individuals imbibing substances including legal and illegal highs or alcohol, or those suffering sleep deprivation, may experience this time distortion and memory loss. Observe the very recently injured or regular opiate users and their slowed gait, gestures and speech for some time after exposure to shock or drugs; whether they feel it or not they will usually have delayed responses and slur.
• Women in labour regularly feel time fluctuates. And on the tangent of women in labour [‘Premature babies” FT353:74], it is difficult to precisely date conception/pregnancy or predict ‘due’ dates. No woman I know has ever been in labour on their due date unless forcibly drugged and induced. The majority of births appear to be premature babies. The longest I have known a child arrive overdue was nearing 10 months. In her books about midwifery, Jennifer Worth details a Spanish mother in fogbound east London salvaging a dangerously premature baby against the odds with breast milk, warmth, and undivided attention.
Many couples who married prior to (and even after) widespread contraceptive availability in Britain did so due to pressure from family, peers and society upon suspecting/discovering a pregnancy. Few people reveal conception early, usually waiting past the two-three month deadline; less than three months and the pregnancy is at great risk, also invisible or easily disguised. Banns and marriages seemingly went ahead respectably prior to reproduction. All that needed explaining away was the abrupt appearance of the baby six or seven months after marriage – hence many children and relatives being convinced the birth was premature, and a persistent, still common, misapprehension as to the appropriate size and weight of many babies carried full term. Lucy Brown Pilton, Somerset