HECK YEAH IT IS BY ELEANOR ROBERTSON
Running late is rude. Despite being a complete space cadetwho
gets anxious thinking about which calendar year it is, I put effort
into maintaining a reasonable standard of punctuality formy
appointments and social calls. I do this because it doesn’treally
matter what my personal opinion on tardiness is – the waytime
works is established collectively, not individually. I would lovetobe
a clock refusenik, hazily marking years by the passing of theseasons
and replying, “Surely it feels like Tuesday to me, sir,” when people
ask what time it is. But unfortunately, I live in a society thatisutterly
obsessed with bureaucratic time management, and in ordertoavoid
hermitry and solipsism, I have to make some attempt to assimilate.
My argument in favour of running late, therefore, must bean
argument for total social transformation. I’d like to live in aworld
where the idea of seconds or milliseconds is only relevant tohigh-
level egghead scientists, elite track athletes, and severeTypeA
personalities who are regarded as oddballs by everyone else.We
can’t just say that being late is fi ne – we have to actually makeitfine.
One of my favourite things about reading classic 19th-centurynovels,
which are mostly about awful English aristocrats, is that theirconcept
of time is based mostly on how long it takes those awful aristocratsto
travel between locations by horse-drawn carriage. In JaneEyre,Jane
is constantly asking the housekeeper when Mr Rochester, themaster
of the sprawling country mansion where she lives, will be home.The
housekeeper will usually reply, “Perhaps in two weeks, miss,but
perhaps he shall stay on the continent this year.” Yes! Amazing!Iwant
to live on Mr Rochester time. And probably “on the continent”,too,
whatever that means.
ButMrRochester only gets to live on Mr Rochester time because he’s
anon-working rentier who lives off inherited wealth. He’s allowed
tobelatebecause he’s a rich social parasite, basically. Me, you and
mostotherpeople can’t just point to a decaying tapestry showing our
familytreeback to the Norman Conquest when people ask why we’re
late.Although I am willing to mock one up during an arts and crafts
afternoonand give that technique a red-hot go.Ashistorian EP Thompson argues, rigid observation of clock time
wasonlyadopted around the advent of the Industrial Revolution,
inordertotrain lazy peasants to work regular hours in the factory
system.Mary, John and Jehosephat from the agricultural hamlet of
Bobbingtonshire, whose experience of time probably related more to
turnipharvests than hours of the day, had to be whipped into shape
bythebosses in order to turn up at the same time every morning
andputintheir 18 hours on the spinning jenny. The spinning jenny
mayhavebeen replaced by forms of work that sound less made-up
(spinningjenny, OK, sure Jehosephat, whatever you say), but the way
timeworks for us is still based on showing up to your job promptly.Thisapproach to time structures our entire social world. Getting a
greasylook from your aunt for showing up to your cousin’s birthday
halfanhour late? Blame industrial time discipline (and defi nitely not
yourchoice to stay up late watching a dozen episodes of The Nanny).
That’swhat we have to change in order for being late to become as
sociallyacceptable as it is morally correct. Humans should not live
sad,regimented lives dictated by tiny hands on a gear-based
contraption – we should be free to decide our own relationship
totime.What time is it? Uhh, turnip-planting time. I think.frankie debate