Tuesday again

It's twenty to nine on a Tuesday morning, some months on. There's a team meeting at nine, in the building across the park. The record says door to seat is twenty-one minutes, so the door is twenty to, and the alarm went at half past. You're on the pavement.

The email that came in overnight is still in your inbox. You'll answer it at ten to nine, in the corridor, with a coffee, and you'll have time to open the spreadsheet and check the figure properly. The keys were in the bowl. The notebook was in the bag last night.

The park path is wet again. You take the longer way round at a normal pace. At the far side you pass the person who chairs the meeting, and they say, "Oh good, I wanted to ask you about the figures before we start," and you have the four minutes to talk about it.

You're in the room at seven minutes to nine. You choose a chair. Not the one by the door.

It wasn't always like this. In the first fortnight you set the alarms and then finished the sentence anyway, twice, and were late, and knew exactly why. In the third week you left on time, arrived twelve minutes early, and found the early minutes surprisingly long. Someone said, "You're early," in a tone you didn't love. Then you got used to it, and then you started bringing a book.

You've been late twice since. Once the road was closed. Once you did the last thing. On both occasions you sent a message at the moment you knew, with a time, and said sorry once on arrival, and it was fine, because it was rare.

Last Thursday you were at Dan and Ellie's at half past seven, having walked round the block once. Dan opened the door and looked at his watch and said nothing, and Ellie said the lasagne had another twenty minutes to go and would you like a drink. It turned out that half past seven had always meant half past seven, and that the lasagne had always been timed for eight, and that for years you'd been arriving just before the food and calling it late.

You still don't like waiting much. You don't do a great deal of it. Most days the cushion gets used, one way or another, and on the days it doesn't you have ten minutes with nothing in them, which you've stopped minding.

If you've read this far and changed nothing yet, try one thing. Pick the next appointment you have. Time the trip from door to seat, honestly, and leave by that figure and not by the one in your head. Then see who's there when you arrive.