My sister's house stands on a corner in Chiswick. One day, many years ago, when my parents were due to visit, she glanced out of a side window about a quarter of an hour before their ETA, only to see them sitting in their car, drinking Nescafe out of a thermos. Think about this scenario:
1) They were 15 minutes early: they had allowed far too much time for a relatively short journey
2) Rather than ring the bell early, they sat in the car, having tried to disguise their presence by parking round the corner
3) They had anticipated this situation by preparing a thermos of coffee to take with them
4) This may well have become a familiar strategy. Perhaps they always did this whenever they
visited people.
5) An observer might say that these behaviours betrayed a concern for punctuality that bordered on the obsessional.
I was brought up by these people with their genes, in their behavioural environment. How could I possibly escape this fate? Otis Redding sang "They call me Mr Pitiful". Well, they call me Mr Punctual. Heredity accounts for much of our behaviour; it would not surprise me to find that a powerful electron microscope could conjure a picture of my chromosomes each regularly consulting miniature Rolexes on their tiny wrists. Naturally I have been late sometimes: I can remember at least two occasions in the last 60-odd years...
Notice that this creates a context which is steeped in the psychpathology of earliness. It won't last. I am just trying to sound reasonable, and not the Grumpy Old Man who soon emerges. Earliness is not a crime. It may reveal a slightly anal obsessiveness with exactitude, but it is harmless, other than in making late people feel a little guilty. Above all it is altruistic, inspired by not making the other person hanging around waiting for you.
We have arrangements to meet people or deadlines to meet, constantly: from dental appointments to assignations with lovers, play-group parties to television interviews, lectures to attend to, dinner with old friends, and many more. We mostly live in towns and cities, and so urban life constantly disrupts our plans: buses are late, trouble on the Tube, rush-hour traffic, road-works, nowhere to park, getting lost, no change for a meter etc. All of these are real, legitimate reasons for lateness (or good excuses) and even though we can try and anticipate and allow for them, we won't always get it right, so we will be late. Understood.
However, there is another category of late-reasons, usually beginning with the word 'I': I just wanted to finish something before I left, I just had to pop into the supermarket for some food, I just bumped into so-and-so who I haven't seen in 10 years, I just realised I'd come out without money and had to queue for the ATM. They tend to involve reasons why the person's terribly busy life makes it impossible to cram everything in, all before they meet you, when actually most of them could be done afterwards. I comes before You in their alphabet.
The important thing to say is that there is a huge difference between lateness and constant lateness. Any reasonable person accepts that sometimes people will be late for good, unavoidable reasons. And that is inevitable and acceptable. No question. It is when you realise that someone is almost always late, that it is an habitual pattern of their behaviour, that it takes on a different aspect. (No, DS, you are in a different category where even your outrageous inability to be on time - except by accident- is a small price to pay for your great friendship). Constant lateness is not a coincidence it is a kind of personality trait: I'm a free and easy kind of person, relaxed and easy to get on with, not too rule-bound, if I fancy popping into a shop on the way then I will, anyway people exaggerate these journeys all the time, there's plenty of time, what's the hurry? One hurry is that it's February, cold and wet, and your friend is standing around getting cold and wet, and wondering if you are going to come at all. Beyond that there is a kind of self-indulgence: that the task that you want to finish off before you leave is your self-oriented choice (you could do it later) but you don't, you finish it now, at his expense. It is in effect a kind of exploitation of his goodwill. It is slightly irritating once but then follows a geometric curve as more repetitions accrue. Most belated people are recidivists who occasionally make it on time, when they remember and feel a pang of conscience in time to be punctual. Some you just have to accept as having a not-at-all interesting eccentricity, which you have to accept, or sacrifice the friendship to a degree.
But would it not benefit everyone if the late people tried to change?
"If you see a man opening a car door for a woman, it means one of two things: it's either a new woman or a new car! "
It is fascinating that this quote has been attributed to two separate people: Prince, and Prince Philip. But which is the originator and which the plagiarist? Surely Prince nicked it off Prince Philip, given the rather old-fashioned and sexist tone. The idea of Prince following the Duke on Twitter is bizarrely satisfying. The only other interpretation that makes sense is that they both thought it up independently, which is quite plausible when you think how fundamentally similar they are in their interests, values and lifestyle. There is even a slight visual similarity if you screw your eyes up and view their photos in poor lighting conditions:
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My elder daughter's first real boyfriend was a very nice lad called Daniel Kafka. Noting the surname my reflex reaction was to say, innocently and half in jest, "No relation, I suppose?" He looked slightly embarrassed and said "Actually Franz Kafka was my great uncle....". I was duly chastened. Daniel's father is a very well-respected car designer, who designed the Audi TT, easily recognisable from these early drawings in his sketchbook which Dan recently unearthed:
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| Prince Harry James Hewitt |
Q: How many other redheads in the Royal Family?
(not counting Harry or Sarah Ferguson, stupid)
A: Err.. .......none?
Gary Lineker on HGNFY: "of course there are lots of people who don't seem to want to be in Europe: I saw eleven of them this week playing for Liverpool".
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