It’s November 2018 and I’m at London Bridge Station on my way to a counselling session in Buxted. As I head for platform 10, the status of my train changes from “On time” to “Cancelled”. I start rushing round the station doing lots of things, my heart rate up, my head a panic zone. I’m doing stuff on my phone. Consulting various station staff. Running up escalators. Running down them again, having changed my mind about whether the best course of action is to go to East Croydon and change. The sort of behaviour you might expect of someone being chased by a hungry bear.
Once I'm settled on the train, things are no better. I can’t do any work because my mind is still fathoming out how to get to the Buxted Park Hotel by 10 o’clock. I start googling taxi firms. I call one and tell them that I'll be getting in at 9:50. The train starts running slow. I start worrying that I'll be late for the taxi. Or that it won’t wait.
I get to the hotel. Still in flight or fight mode over an hour after I discovered the train was cancelled, I run round the bar, lounge and breakfast room looking for Julia (instead of just calling her). At 10:05, we find each other. We spend most of the 2 hour session discussing why I’m so upset about being five minutes late.
In my family, being late was absolutely not OK. Not by a minute. Not even as a one-off. Nothing (short of your own death) justified it. Lack of punctuality, I was taught, demonstrated many things about you. That you were unreliable. That you didn’t give a toss about the person you were meeting. And worst of all, that you were bad mannered. The consequences were dire. You could lose a job, a friend or your good name. At the very least, you would incur the extreme wrath of your parents.
Being on time was a particular matter of life and death if it involved Granny. Granny stood five foot tall and weighed not much more than seven stone. She was by far the scariest person I met during my childhood and adolescence. Every eighth Saturday we’d drive to Malvern, hang around in a lay-by for up to an hour (we’d left early “just in case”) while mum worried through everything that could go wrong with the visit. We were so predictable in arriving early that mum and dad brought a flask of coffee to drink while we sat in the lay-by. Dad and I would be given the usual instructions on behaviour. Then we’d set off on the final 5 minute drive to Davenham, a converted stately home that was a residence for elderly “gentlefolk” like Granny. As we reached the imposing door, we'd straighten up, quieten down and prepare to pay meticulous attention to our ps and qs. But all our good behaviour would be to no avail if we were late. Or more than 5 minutes early – which showed equally bad breeding.
By the time I was an adult, the law of not being late had become part of my modus operandi. Like mum, I’d plan each journey. Once I’d worked out how long it would take, I’d build in 50% contingency (just in case). Travelling was an anxiety-ridden and time-consuming activity. And I did it almost every day.
I applied the same harsh rules about lateness to others too. If a friend was late even by a few minutes, I'd start to feel stressed. If more than 10 minutes passed, I'd become unreasonably angry. But really, I was hurt. The law of lateness applied to both parties. So it followed that if me being late showed that I didn't give a toss about them, then them being late must signify that they didn’t give a toss about me.
Treating potential lateness as a catastrophic event is a parental message that I’ve found especially difficult to shift. Recognising that the stress was unnecessary and counter-productive was the first step. Getting into the habit of catching myself when I started to panic was harder. Once I was able to do that, I spent many months going through the process of "pressing pause" (as Julia says) in order to prevent myself reacting. Then allowing myself to feel the panic and concentrating on my breathing until the panic cleared. I suffer from "OMG! I'm going to be late" a lot less these days. And being on time is not something I want to change. But I do want to be able to travel without feeling like I’m being chased around London Bridge Station by a bear.