PUNCTUALITY

Wairarapa Times-Age, 26 August 1938, Page 8

PUNCTUALITY

A CAUSTIC EXAMINATION. Have you a minute to spare? You haven’t! Well, never mind",' don't spare it—waste it —even if it may mean your arriving late; it’s really important. I want to cross-question you. Do you always datch your train? Could all your drawers bear inspection? You do? Good. Read on, please. It is about you. One of your most characteristic habits is early rising, isn’t it? You positively love it You rave about that hour or so before breakfast when one can get so many little things done in the quietness —a sponge baked, a letter written, all the darning done. You turn innocent eyes on other people and wonder aloud how anyone can lie in bed in the morning. . . .. Please don’t stop yet. Just a minute. Punctuality is a religion with you. Not just arriving at the station as thp train slides into view. Not just slipping into your stall a moment before the curtain rises. By punctuality you mean, allowing yourself a good halfhour to pace the platform or sit in the empty theatre, admiring the safety curtain. You mean arriving at the party while the hostess is still hovering nervously over the preparation of the dining room table, and long before she has thought of powdering her nose. (“But don’t mind me, dear,” - you’ve heard yourself insist, all smiles; “I’m such a horribly punctual person, you know.”) You take time by the forelock. You live about six months ahead of everybody else. By the end of September your Christmas preparations were completed. By July you have chosen your spring outfits and arranged your summer holidays, and are regarding the rest of us with complacent pity. No, just read on, -please. I won’t keep you very much longer. I’ve noticed, too, that you are always full of nervy little projects that fill in every scrap of your spare time? Like upholstering sweet little sets of coat hangers to match the wallpaper of every bedroom, or painting a design of bones on the dog’s dinner set? You have always “something to show” for your spare time. It is your proud boast that you never waste a moment. I should not have said a word against

you if it were not for your missionary zeal. You are forever pointing out how right you are and how wrong we others are. so that some of Us have almost begun to believe you. Well, now, you can’t be right all the time, cam you?

Take this talk about early rising, tor instance. Haven’t you noticed what happens to a really early riser somewhere between 10 and 11 p.m.? She wilts, her needle falls from her sleepy fingers. You know her? I can imagine you blush? But do you admit that you were up far too early this morning? Not you! “Time everyone was in bed,” you cry with all the briskness you can muster. Meanwhile, as the house settles down for the night and the streets become deliciously silent, I put another log on the fire and lie back in an easy chair with a book and a fine sense of freedom. The wee small hours are mine. Would I exchange them for a paltry chilly few minutes in the morning, when I would feel obliged to do something useful?

Now, you’re near the end, don’t rush off, you may as well finish. This twaddle about punctuality. I want to tell you (now that I’ve the chance) that I couldn’t bear to waste time as you do. It is high time someone tackled you on the subject. “Good gracious,” I make a point of saying as I rush up five minutes late for my appointment, “don’t tell me you’ve been standing here for a quarter of an hour. Think of what you could do in that time! I've bought a hat and had two coffees.”

And these little projects. You are so full of them that you never have a moment to “stand and stare.” As soon as you have tidied your drawers it is time to overhaul your wardrobes, and when that is finished Satan finds some other mischief for you. Do you really mean to spend your life like that? I don’t, and this is my note of defiance. And now this article has taken five minutes to read, and I hope it’s lost you your bus. It’ll do you good.— Isabel Adam, in the Glasgow Weekly Herald.