Time dawdles when you’re waiting – Joe Bennett

It may have been while waiting that Einstein discovered time could travel at different speeds. Photo /123rf

I am waiting for a man to sweep my chimney. He promised to be here at 10. At 10.10 he texted to say he was just finishing a job and he would be here nearer 11.

It is now 10.57. You can’t get much nearer 11 than that. (Of course, if one were to be pedantic, any time until 11.49 would be nearer 11 than 10.10, but one doesn’t expect pedantry from a chimney sweep. One expects punctuality.)

It may have been while waiting that Einstein discovered time could travel at different speeds. When one’s waiting, it dawdles. In a waiting room proper it stands still.

Everything is supposed to come to him who waits but everything doesn’t seem to include chimney sweeps.

And because I am waiting I am finding it hard to concentrate on writing. I have one ear turned to the world outside so that when I hear his truck I can go out and encourage it up the drive.

Trucks often get stuck on my drive and no tradesman likes a stuck truck. It wounds his pride. And having to carry his tools up the last bit of the drive does not put him in the mood to be a good tradesman.

I am aware that I am writing tradesman and not tradesperson, but that is because every tradesman who has ever come to this house has been just that.

It is not policy on my part. I would be delighted, for example, to employ a female chimney sweep – she might even be more punctual – but I have yet to meet one.

She might also, however, be less punctual. Most of the less punctual people I know are women. One dear friend is always at least 30 minutes late for any rendezvous. In aggregate, I must have spent several days of my life waiting for her, yet I still arrive at our meetings on time. It is partly because that’s who I am and partly because of Sod’s Law. It dictates that on the one day I was late she wouldn’t be.

When she finally arrives she always smiles and says sorry and I forgive her. But while I am waiting I don’t. I feel that I am being robbed of the chance to use the time more profitably. But I probably wouldn’t use it more profitably. Most time is wasted. Philip Larkin called it “time torn off, unused”.

It is now 11.55am. So much for “nearer 11″. About noon most days I have fried eggs on toast for lunch.

But Sod’s Law dictates that if I were to make lunch now, just as I was sliding the eggs on to the thickly buttered and still warm toast, there would be the sound of a chimney sweep’s truck getting stuck on the drive.

At 12.20 I stopped work and put Sod’s Law to the test. I loaded bread into the toaster and listened for the truck.

Silence. I put the pan on the hob and took the butter from the fridge. Silence. I cracked two eggs into a bowl and cocked an ear. I heard only a bellbird singing.

The toast was done. I swirled a knob of butter round the pan, listened one final time, and tipped the eggs in. It was while I was buttering the toast that the phone went ping. “Five minutes,” said the text.

As well as writing the best poetry written in English in my lifetime, Larkin wrote two novels.

In one of them a shy young man is in a crowded train compartment. He is hungry and he has a packet of sandwiches in his pocket, but he can’t bring himself to eat in front of his fellow passengers.

Eventually, he goes to the lavatory to eat. But then there’s a furious rattle on the door and he throws half his sandwiches away uneaten.

When he gets back to the compartment the other passengers have all brought out food. They keep offering some to the young man, who turns them down.

No doubt there are people in this world who would be happy to be halfway through their eggs on toast when a chimney sweep arrived at their house.

I am not one of those people.

There is something private about eating, an intimate weakness, a confessional quality, like being undressed.

I bolted the eggs on toast and was washing up to hide the evidence when I heard the truck. It was not getting stuck on the drive. The wait was over.

“Sorry, I’m a bit late,” said the chimney sweep.

“No worries,” I said.