Timing is everything

I’m phobic about lateness. I can’t help it. Years spent as the last child on the school bus, the child who had to meet the French Exchange coach at a service station because we’d left late and got stuck in traffic, have scarred me. An indelible psychological mark which requires me to get up early, be early, run across platforms, through concourses, up vast escalators just to avoid Being Late.

My parents were never very good at being on time; I now know, being a parent and working for a living is not always time compatible. I remember spending many hours sitting on the Christchurch Road street sign outside school waiting for my dad to finish early and speed across Norwich to pick me up. After School Clubs didn’t really exist then and we lived in the middle of nowhere, so I waited or walked the mile into the City to get a bus that took hours and was full of kids who scared me and took the piss out of my pea green girls school uniform and funny accent. The fact that anyone with a deep Norfolk accent can take the piss out of anyone else for not having one is laughable now, but then, when I hadn’t quite masked the mix of Scottish and posh Geordie, I was an easy target.

I remember vividly a half day school holiday; I’d arranged to meet Mum at Marks and Spencer’s when she finished her shift at the hospital. I raced all the way, couldn’t be late, could never be late. An hour and a half later, Mum appeared. I’d sat on the seats under the escalator, next to women’s lingerie, unable to contact her, since these were the days before mobile phones, waiting, endless waiting, seething. Mum appeared, immaculate as usual, lipstick always perfectly applied, only the smear of someone else’s blood on the side of her face which she’d missed as she’d got changed, evidence of the more pressing call on her time. “Sorry pet, a man’s heart exploded just as I was leaving”. Not much you can say to that.

There are only so many times you can try to get on a moving train as one of your parents shoves a packed lunch through the push down window of a train door without losing your sense of humour. My hatred of lateness meant it was a delicious irony that the man I married didn’t own a watch and had really only ever worked for himself, setting his own, very loose, timescales. Naively, I was all up for the opposites attract thing but the cracks became crevices one Saturday; we were off to one of the many weddings which financially cripple one’s late twenties and early thirties. I was ready, frock on, hat on, fake tan even, bang on time. “Are you ready yet love? We’ve got to leave” “Yep, give me five.” I’m not sure what made me go and check but check I did, and there he was, still in his pants, holding the silicone gun he was using to reseal the bath. We missed a good chunk of the ceremony and the bulging vein on the side of my forehead was visible in most of the photographs.

When Smallfry was new and I was determined to be a Good Mum, I bought Gina Ford’s Contented Baby Book. Fucking Gina Ford. It’s the only book I’ve ever burned and I took delight in watching the pages curl and disintegrate in the flames. Gina’s timetable induced near psychosis as I desperately tried to get the curtains open at 7.30am, me showered and dressed by 8am, baby fed and cleaned and dressed by 8.30am and on it went, a relentless routine of bullshit which, given I had a baby who needed breast fed every hour and a half because she was allergic to everything, I was always behind. I was late, properly late, for the first time in my adult life when I was supposed to be in control. Of course that was bullshit too, the only one of the three of us who was in control was Grace herself and that’s not changed.

I’ve visited inhospitable places in the midst of civil insurrection; I’ve negotiated with foreign governments; I’ve moved houses more times than I can remember; my divorce was so rock and roll it had its own theme tune, but nothing, and I mean nothing in the entire world has made me more stressed than the school run. A goal oriented parent versus a child intent on arranging all of the Palace Pets by order of Disney Princess is an epic battle of wills.

I get up every morning at 6.15am. We don’t leave the house until 8.30am, usually screeching down the road, the Jag on two wheels as we round the corner on to the promenade, relying on friends texts to let me know if there’s a speed trap on the half mile drive to school. Yes, the half mile drive. It’s ludicrous. We’re never on time.

Breakfasted, showered, coiffed, coffeed, overnight emails checked and answered, the plethora of school accoutrements packed and stacked by the door, I’m ready to go at 7.45am; all she has to do is get dressed. Much like her father, Smallfry can contrive a Silicone Gun Moment every morning, and every morning, Groundhog like, I find myself at the foot of the stairs in an aneurism inducing rage that this is another late day and Charlie and Fucking Lola is not more important than getting dressed.

“Chill out Mama, I’ll be ready in five” and the child descends the stairs, the image of her mother, the image of her father and every morning, as I age five minutes for every one that passes, I promise myself tomorrow will be different…