Madonna was wrong - time goes by so quickly, quickly, quickly

It offers a short life span of choices, and sliding doors as the movie suggested, and then it's gone in a flash, to a new generation.

Time is a tyrant.

It flirts with our ego and plays with our sense of drama and then it shoves us to the back of the toy box like a broken doll or a yoyo missing its string.

When our time has come we lounge in the presence of it all, basking in the notoriety of our impact on earth, but then we're in the shadow of the limelight and finally our name is carved into a headstone.

You can imagine General Dwight Eisenhower and his staff surrounded by maps and advisers as they agonised over the decision to launch the D-Day invasion in 1944.

The future of the world weighed on their shoulders and then it was gone, and their generation died, relegated to dusty shelves in libraries.

It would have felt like the centre of the universe, but then it became a mere memory.

Another sliver of history.

Taylor Swift has the world at her feet but even she would know that the music will die and those spectacular events in front of almost 100,000 adoring fans will simmer down into another Rockin' Roll Hall of Fame.

You can feel it when you visit places of great moment in history.

Years ago I stood on Omaha Beach in Normandy where the Americans lost thousands in the invasion, and now the only sound is the waves lapping lazily on the shore.

I remember standing at ground zero where the atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima and it was chilling to imagine what it would have been like.

When I worked in the Old Parliament House press gallery, on a quiet Sunday evening I would wait on the steps for my lift and imagine the drama and the crowds when Sir John Kerr sacked the Whitlam Government in 1975.

Gough stood where I sat and gave his "Well may God save the Queen..." speech.

Now they're all dead.

Gone to make way for new dramas.

In my time training cadet reporters I said they could ask me any question they liked and I promised not to scoff or embarrass them.

After the session one hung back and asked me "What was the bribery Royal Commission?"

In Papua New Guinea I walked a portion of the Kokoda Track and it was stinking hot, and we were covered in sweat and the heat sapped our energy so we stumbled frequently on the slippery trail.

You marvelled at how those novice reserve soldiers managed the heat and the fatigue while taut with fear, waiting to die.

Likewise you can climb the hills at Anzac Cove on the Gallipoli Peninsula, like a time traveller, remembering 1915 as if it was yesterday.

Christians are not that bothered by all this because they're suiting up for eternity, and their life on earth is transitory.

But even in their quest for heaven they would know that earth is their departure lounge, so they're not exempt from the tyranny.

There are times that can drive you mad with nostalgia.

After primary school I would sit in our lounge room, turn on the record player and listen to my sisters' records. Buddy Holly, Pat Boone and others.

Now I can't get the songs out of my head.

My favourite movie is Casablanca, the World War Two romance starring Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman.

Bogart played Rick Blaine and his night club features in the movie.

I know it's silly but what a fabulous night it would have been in his night club, where patrons sipped expensive champagne and bribed officials for plane tickets to escape the Nazis.

It's just a movie.

A fantasy, but I would die for a night there.

One of my favourite novels is the Great Gatsby, where the enigmatic Jay Gatsby would hold huge champagne parties for the rich and beautiful at his luxury mansion on Long Island.

God, I wanted so badly to arrive as a guest.

So I've read it a few times to go there and be with those beautiful, shallow souls, with their long cigarette holders, stunning faces, exotic clothes and lofty gossip.

Yep, it's silly.

My mother many times told me of how she met Dad.

She was at a dance at Anglesea Barracks in Hobart round 1938 after being dragged along by her sister.

By mid-evening she was bored and told her sister she would find her own way home, when she noticed this tall, handsome man in uniform walking across the dance floor and then she realised he was looking at her.

So, here I am.

My mother would describe the night with such passion and nostalgia and it was like being there as she remembered the scene.

She recounted this story to me several hundred times, but I never minded at all.