There is the most explicit attempt in Tom's Midnight Garden to understand the nature of time, one's attitude to it, its relation to one's own existence. Many aspects come over powerfully: the child growing up and changing; the destruction of the garden and its transformation into a housing estate; and a mean little yard mirroring a whole changed pattern of society. But I think that Philippa Pearce's resistance to the new polluted environment loses its impact because it becomes identified with the feelings towards the loss of childhood, which is an inevitable process, whereas the pollution of the environment need not be….

Tom is only really aware of time in relation to his own immediate living, and to the things he wants to do…. (p. 79)

This refers only to a week in Tom's life, but it reflects the larger truth of time as the creator and the destroyer...