It’s a funny old time. I end up having seriously random conversations with complete strangers yet seeing friends is apparently impossible. I think lockdown has seriously damaging our connections, empathy and patience. I find the example of giving a time to people no longer has any flexibility. No one seems to anticipate any fluctuations in time.

One person’s lunchtime can cover 12 till 3 easily, while my ‘noon’ means around 12 o’clock, yet it can mean something less flexible to others (ie 12:00:00) or even earlier? I think my husband links his phone to the Greenwich Mean Time clock so I do rely on him giving me the correct time. I wear a Swatch (not an advert) but it could run to the wrong time so I double check it with my phone which also connects to Apple time. I forget I am wearing a watch sometimes as I hadn’t been able to afford a Swatch replacement and only just appealed to them for a replacement catch.

But if you say noon to me and are vague, and I don’t know what your schedule is like because we have exchanged two texts, ever, then I feel aggrieved that my availability didn’t match yours and I am left feeling bad! This is why Freecycle sites are such a minefield too!

Holding a strawberry and Nutella crepe at lunchtime, did mean I was concentrating on eating rather than my watch. My hubby said we left the crepe stall at 11.47 which meant 13 minutes to get home, which is easily done. But it did mean we may have missed someone waiting at my front door earlier, because their interpretation of noon is ‘before 12’. But rather than message me, it took my text at 12:30 to tell me they had been and gone. And I was left feeling bad that I didn’t anticipate being here at twelve on the dot was NOT what was meant by noon.

Maybe there is that Autism spectrum conundrum again. If it had been my daughter who made the appointment we would NOT have been late, however, maybe I don’t have that level of precision. Maybe that’s why I didn’t become an engineer or an architect. I am a bit too airy-fairy, my garden is not laid out with military precision and I am quite happy with the randomness and creativity of Nature. And utilising A Wee bit of AuldScots, it takes ‘aw kin’ o’ fowk’…