The Relationship Between What You Say and When You Say It

Tense is a relation between a person and an event or a state of fairs, like this interview. Relations in general are not properties of the things that are related. For example, I suspect you're taller than me isn't a property of mine. It's a relation between us. When you say, here I am in Cambridge, that will be true. But the when, the time itself isn't either now or then or past or future. The time just is, just as Cambridge just is.