I was born a month prematurely, and that was the last time I was early for anything. Even then, it was an elective cesarean so I wasn't even responsible for this uncommon punctuality.
I am terminally late for everything: when it comes to time-keeping, I enter the realm of ‘magical thinking’ where an appointment for 12.30pm, 15 minutes drive away, means I leave the house at 12.25pm. This sounds like straightforward bad manners but it's more complicated than that and is rather a combination of a misplaced optimism, a tendency to blur uncomfortable facts, as well as a need to be in crisis mode at all times (I have the same philosophy with money). The result is that I’m permanently late, harassed and apologetic. I have cunningly set all my clocks 5 minutes fast which is a pointless exercise since I merely make a mental adjustment whenever I look at them.
This tardiness is a common trait in my family where no holiday was complete without missing either a ferry or a plane. Somewhere in my distant memory is the grainy image of my family sitting crestfallen on the side of the dock in Liverpool as the ferry makes it's rapid departure towards Ireland. My father once tried to convince staff on the runway to stop a plane he'd missed at Knock airport. It being Knock, I think they almost considered it.
When I was six my father decided we would drive to Italy from the UK for our summer holiay. I can recall rattling around in the back of a mini bus as we made our way through five countries, as well as the treacherous ascent and descent through the Swiss Alps, only to arrive three days later at our holiday apartment to be informed by a dismayed landlady that we were a week late!
My problem is I have an equal measure of tardiness and a need for approval, which is a very bad combination because not only will I definitely be late, I’ll definitely feel terrible about it as well. My sister suffers from the same questionable time-keeping, but doesn’t care. Her attitude is one of 'if they want to be upset about my being late, it's their problem' Once after several stern letters from the school regarding her children's consistent lateness, she challenged them to provide her a school bus so the children wouldn’t be late any more. She actually got it! I envy her insensitivity. In fact, I once did the ladies mini marathon with her in Dublin, for which we were so late that the start line had been taken away by the time we got there (we got distracted in Marks & Spencer).
But the lateness is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my need to live on the edge (albeit a very domesticated and mundane ‘edge’). I don’t feel whole unless I have a current crisis and they present themselves (or are cultivated) on a daily basis. I’ve self-diagnosed my 'condition' as chaos addiction. Take yesterday for example. At midnight, every night, my PC pings up a message saying ‘Renew daughters passport’. I’ve been listening to this ping for months. The process has crept along slowly. It started with a series of emails to the Irish Embassy's office in Abu Dhabi and after a month, DH eventually made it in to collect an application form. Another 2 weeks and eventually we had her photos taken. By the end of the week I was feeling confident enough to inform the school that the children would not be in attendance the following day as we needed to go into Abu Dhabi and get the application forms witnessed. So far, so painfully drawn out.
And so, the following morning I woke, dressed, got the children up, and at that point decided to gather all the necessary documents. And this is where the chaos addiction comes into play. Any reasonable person would have sought out all the necessary paperwork prior to the event. First thing missing was our original marriage certificate. I had 2 photocopies but no original. Brushing that aside, I went to the counter where all the passports are. I found one, my 2 year old's. Two more proved to be in the car. Mine eventually surfaced in a mess of documents near the desk. In fact, every family members except the one needed, my daughters. I phoned DH, ‘where is it? You MUST have it!’ DH insisted he didn’t. After 10 minutes of searching I concluded it was lost and we may as well go to Abu Dhabi anyway and just declare it lost and apply for a new one. Simple. In to the car I piled everyone and off we headed with the paltry documents we had. Ten minutes into the journey and I decided to phone the embassy office to tell them of my change of plan. The chilling words of the girl at the end of the phone caused me to pull over and place my head on the steering wheel;
'You will need a police report in order to apply for a new one.'
Now, in Ireland this would be a mild inconvenience, enough to make me complain loudly about bureaucracy gone mad.
But this isn’t Ireland.
Turning the car around, I phoned DH to say ‘I’m not leaving here without that bloody passport’. I skidded to a stop outside the house and proceeded to tear the place apart. Sofas were upturned, bookshelves cleared, boxes turned upside down. I grabbed two-year-old and five-year-old ‘Now guys, I know you’re involved, WHERE IS IT??’ (this wasn’t unreasonable of me, last time something went missing we searched for half an hour before turning on five-year-old-boy who calmly lead us to the end of the garden to a pile of sand and presented us with the lost item). Both feigned total ignorance.
After half an hour of fruitless searching I reasoned ‘how hard can getting a police report be? (oh, such folly!) and phoned DH to say ‘you go and get the report, I’ll meet you at the office’.
Two hours later as I crawled through Abu Dhabi traffic, DH phoned to inform me that having been directed to three different locations he eventually was told the tragic truth. He would need to –
-visit 4 different offices around the city in order to gain various stamps and forms
-go to the Sharia court (NO!! I wailed, that’s where they behead people!!)
-PUT AN ADVERT IN THE PAPER and take the photocopy of this ad to their office
Undeterred, DH then asked if he could go and start the process immediately, and was told everywhere was closed for lunch. Quelle surprise!
So we went for lunch to assess the damage. We concluded that the passport was definitely in the house and we’d spend the weekend looking for it.
And so having driven two and a half hours to Abu Dhabi it turned out that it was all for nought (although I did buy a jolly nice dress for the ball). On the journey home, sometime outside Dubai (on the Abu Dhabi side), having passed countless petrol stations (one if which we actually stopped at so that my daughter could use the toilet) I realised my yellow light was showing that I was low on petrol. I decided to come off the bypass at Dubai and find a petrol station as I knew there wasn’t one from Dubai to RAK.
After driving around in the dark for 30 minutes I found myself rejoining the bypass with an empty petrol tank and a phone with a flat battery. I assessed the damage. I had an hour of a journey left and should I run out of petrol I would have no ability to contact DH to tell him of my dilemma. What on earth was I going to do? I kept going. I saw this on Top Gear once.
Miraculously I made it to Umm al Quain where I found a petrol station. I asked the manager if there was a pay phone, ostensibly to tell DH I was alright (he wouldn’t have been worried) but mainly to let him know that I hadn’t made it to the off license and it was closing in ten minutes. The manager, seeing that at this point I was wild eyed and manic having spent 6 hours with 4 kids in a car (not to mention the stress of having spent the last hour waiting for the car to glide to a hault on the side of the road, where, unable to contact DH, I would most certainly be murdered) kindly offered to let me use the office phone. Well, it was Thursday night and there was not a drop of alcohol in the house and DH would have assumed I had it covered… Feeling like I was back in the principals office, I recited DH’s phone number, holding my breath as he punched in the number. Handing me the receiver he said ‘it’s ringing’. He didn’t leave the room, he was going to hear this conversation. What was I going to say, that the drama which DH was unaware of was now over?
-Yes?
-Hi, err, I nearly ran out of petrol
-Oh, are you OK?
-Yes, I’m in Umm al Quawain, at the petrol station
-Oh, right
-Yes, it was terrible, and my phone was dead
-Yes, I saw that
-So, I’ll be home soon (ask about the booze!!!)
-Ok, well, see you then…oh, wait, have you been to the off license?
-No, you had better go now!!
-I’ve 5 minutes, gotta go
-bye
-bye
Handing back the phone I thanked the manager, wondering what he made of my side of this brief exchange.
While the guy filled the car I spent all the cash in my purse on goodies from the shop. Emerging minutes later laden with drinks and snacks I offered the petrol attendant my credit card to pay for the petrol. ‘Sorry ma'am, no credit cards’ he sang, pleased with himself. Taking my driving license as collateral he directed me to the nearest ATM (as an aside, I feel strongly that petrol stations and restaurants which don’t accept credit cards should inform the customer of this on arrival, after all, it’s not as if you can put your purchases back). Not following his directions too closely, I managed to take a wrong turn and ended up almost in Sharjah before I found a U turn where I could turn around a come back, adding an unnecessary 30 minutes onto what was already an agonising journey.
To cut a sorry tale short, I finally made it home and spent the whole weekend looking for the passport, to no avail. It wasn’t until I’d given up hope that I found myself walking out to the car, trancelike, opened the glove compartment and put my hand behind it where, sure enough, there it was. Drama over. Until the next one.
The point of this story is that each drama was predictable, unnecessary and utterly avoidable, from the missing documents, the pointless journey, ignoring the fuel gauge, using all available cash on unnecessary purchases resulting in mad dashes to ATM's and crucially, not keeping a well stocked drinks cabinet. But the chaos addiction is blind to these warning signs and always chooses the most difficult and hazardous route. I guess the psychology behind it is that constantly living in crisis mode means ignoring the smaller, humdrum banalities of daily life, instead focusing on the immediate drama as it unfolds. One day I hope to address this need for the theatrical, to bring some calm into my life, I could try therapy but no doubt I'd get there late and find they didn't accept credit cards.
-
I am terminally late for everything: when it comes to time-keeping, I enter the realm of ‘magical thinking’ where an appointment for 12.30pm, 15 minutes drive away, means I leave the house at 12.25pm. This sounds like straightforward bad manners but it's more complicated than that and is rather a combination of a misplaced optimism, a tendency to blur uncomfortable facts, as well as a need to be in crisis mode at all times (I have the same philosophy with money). The result is that I’m permanently late, harassed and apologetic. I have cunningly set all my clocks 5 minutes fast which is a pointless exercise since I merely make a mental adjustment whenever I look at them.
This tardiness is a common trait in my family where no holiday was complete without missing either a ferry or a plane. Somewhere in my distant memory is the grainy image of my family sitting crestfallen on the side of the dock in Liverpool as the ferry makes it's rapid departure towards Ireland. My father once tried to convince staff on the runway to stop a plane he'd missed at Knock airport. It being Knock, I think they almost considered it.
When I was six my father decided we would drive to Italy from the UK for our summer holiay. I can recall rattling around in the back of a mini bus as we made our way through five countries, as well as the treacherous ascent and descent through the Swiss Alps, only to arrive three days later at our holiday apartment to be informed by a dismayed landlady that we were a week late!
My problem is I have an equal measure of tardiness and a need for approval, which is a very bad combination because not only will I definitely be late, I’ll definitely feel terrible about it as well. My sister suffers from the same questionable time-keeping, but doesn’t care. Her attitude is one of 'if they want to be upset about my being late, it's their problem' Once after several stern letters from the school regarding her children's consistent lateness, she challenged them to provide her a school bus so the children wouldn’t be late any more. She actually got it! I envy her insensitivity. In fact, I once did the ladies mini marathon with her in Dublin, for which we were so late that the start line had been taken away by the time we got there (we got distracted in Marks & Spencer).
But the lateness is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to my need to live on the edge (albeit a very domesticated and mundane ‘edge’). I don’t feel whole unless I have a current crisis and they present themselves (or are cultivated) on a daily basis. I’ve self-diagnosed my 'condition' as chaos addiction. Take yesterday for example. At midnight, every night, my PC pings up a message saying ‘Renew daughters passport’. I’ve been listening to this ping for months. The process has crept along slowly. It started with a series of emails to the Irish Embassy's office in Abu Dhabi and after a month, DH eventually made it in to collect an application form. Another 2 weeks and eventually we had her photos taken. By the end of the week I was feeling confident enough to inform the school that the children would not be in attendance the following day as we needed to go into Abu Dhabi and get the application forms witnessed. So far, so painfully drawn out.
And so, the following morning I woke, dressed, got the children up, and at that point decided to gather all the necessary documents. And this is where the chaos addiction comes into play. Any reasonable person would have sought out all the necessary paperwork prior to the event. First thing missing was our original marriage certificate. I had 2 photocopies but no original. Brushing that aside, I went to the counter where all the passports are. I found one, my 2 year old's. Two more proved to be in the car. Mine eventually surfaced in a mess of documents near the desk. In fact, every family members except the one needed, my daughters. I phoned DH, ‘where is it? You MUST have it!’ DH insisted he didn’t. After 10 minutes of searching I concluded it was lost and we may as well go to Abu Dhabi anyway and just declare it lost and apply for a new one. Simple. In to the car I piled everyone and off we headed with the paltry documents we had. Ten minutes into the journey and I decided to phone the embassy office to tell them of my change of plan. The chilling words of the girl at the end of the phone caused me to pull over and place my head on the steering wheel;
'You will need a police report in order to apply for a new one.'
Now, in Ireland this would be a mild inconvenience, enough to make me complain loudly about bureaucracy gone mad.
But this isn’t Ireland.
Turning the car around, I phoned DH to say ‘I’m not leaving here without that bloody passport’. I skidded to a stop outside the house and proceeded to tear the place apart. Sofas were upturned, bookshelves cleared, boxes turned upside down. I grabbed two-year-old and five-year-old ‘Now guys, I know you’re involved, WHERE IS IT??’ (this wasn’t unreasonable of me, last time something went missing we searched for half an hour before turning on five-year-old-boy who calmly lead us to the end of the garden to a pile of sand and presented us with the lost item). Both feigned total ignorance.
After half an hour of fruitless searching I reasoned ‘how hard can getting a police report be? (oh, such folly!) and phoned DH to say ‘you go and get the report, I’ll meet you at the office’.
Two hours later as I crawled through Abu Dhabi traffic, DH phoned to inform me that having been directed to three different locations he eventually was told the tragic truth. He would need to –
-visit 4 different offices around the city in order to gain various stamps and forms
-go to the Sharia court (NO!! I wailed, that’s where they behead people!!)
-PUT AN ADVERT IN THE PAPER and take the photocopy of this ad to their office
Undeterred, DH then asked if he could go and start the process immediately, and was told everywhere was closed for lunch. Quelle surprise!
So we went for lunch to assess the damage. We concluded that the passport was definitely in the house and we’d spend the weekend looking for it.
And so having driven two and a half hours to Abu Dhabi it turned out that it was all for nought (although I did buy a jolly nice dress for the ball). On the journey home, sometime outside Dubai (on the Abu Dhabi side), having passed countless petrol stations (one if which we actually stopped at so that my daughter could use the toilet) I realised my yellow light was showing that I was low on petrol. I decided to come off the bypass at Dubai and find a petrol station as I knew there wasn’t one from Dubai to RAK.
After driving around in the dark for 30 minutes I found myself rejoining the bypass with an empty petrol tank and a phone with a flat battery. I assessed the damage. I had an hour of a journey left and should I run out of petrol I would have no ability to contact DH to tell him of my dilemma. What on earth was I going to do? I kept going. I saw this on Top Gear once.
Miraculously I made it to Umm al Quain where I found a petrol station. I asked the manager if there was a pay phone, ostensibly to tell DH I was alright (he wouldn’t have been worried) but mainly to let him know that I hadn’t made it to the off license and it was closing in ten minutes. The manager, seeing that at this point I was wild eyed and manic having spent 6 hours with 4 kids in a car (not to mention the stress of having spent the last hour waiting for the car to glide to a hault on the side of the road, where, unable to contact DH, I would most certainly be murdered) kindly offered to let me use the office phone. Well, it was Thursday night and there was not a drop of alcohol in the house and DH would have assumed I had it covered… Feeling like I was back in the principals office, I recited DH’s phone number, holding my breath as he punched in the number. Handing me the receiver he said ‘it’s ringing’. He didn’t leave the room, he was going to hear this conversation. What was I going to say, that the drama which DH was unaware of was now over?
-Yes?
-Hi, err, I nearly ran out of petrol
-Oh, are you OK?
-Yes, I’m in Umm al Quawain, at the petrol station
-Oh, right
-Yes, it was terrible, and my phone was dead
-Yes, I saw that
-So, I’ll be home soon (ask about the booze!!!)
-Ok, well, see you then…oh, wait, have you been to the off license?
-No, you had better go now!!
-I’ve 5 minutes, gotta go
-bye
-bye
Handing back the phone I thanked the manager, wondering what he made of my side of this brief exchange.
While the guy filled the car I spent all the cash in my purse on goodies from the shop. Emerging minutes later laden with drinks and snacks I offered the petrol attendant my credit card to pay for the petrol. ‘Sorry ma'am, no credit cards’ he sang, pleased with himself. Taking my driving license as collateral he directed me to the nearest ATM (as an aside, I feel strongly that petrol stations and restaurants which don’t accept credit cards should inform the customer of this on arrival, after all, it’s not as if you can put your purchases back). Not following his directions too closely, I managed to take a wrong turn and ended up almost in Sharjah before I found a U turn where I could turn around a come back, adding an unnecessary 30 minutes onto what was already an agonising journey.
To cut a sorry tale short, I finally made it home and spent the whole weekend looking for the passport, to no avail. It wasn’t until I’d given up hope that I found myself walking out to the car, trancelike, opened the glove compartment and put my hand behind it where, sure enough, there it was. Drama over. Until the next one.
The point of this story is that each drama was predictable, unnecessary and utterly avoidable, from the missing documents, the pointless journey, ignoring the fuel gauge, using all available cash on unnecessary purchases resulting in mad dashes to ATM's and crucially, not keeping a well stocked drinks cabinet. But the chaos addiction is blind to these warning signs and always chooses the most difficult and hazardous route. I guess the psychology behind it is that constantly living in crisis mode means ignoring the smaller, humdrum banalities of daily life, instead focusing on the immediate drama as it unfolds. One day I hope to address this need for the theatrical, to bring some calm into my life, I could try therapy but no doubt I'd get there late and find they didn't accept credit cards.
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This was just what I needed after a crap week ..made me laugh a lot. But, with the greatest of respect (here comes the disrespectful comment!), you must be a total bl**dy nightmare to live with!! :-)
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