Leaving it to the last minute…

The feeling when I woke up was one of confusion. Not the sort of confusion you feel when you have had too much to drink the night before and wonder where you are, how you got there and who pressed the play button on the carousel that is the room.

No, more the sort of confusion you feel when you enter a room, full of good intent and with a sense of real purpose, only to wonder a few seconds later why you came in. The room I was in now was a bedroom and had a double bed with one occupant. Me. I was lying, well, actually more sprawled than lying, amidst a nice warm flower patterned quilt. My head was being cushioned by a deep soft pillow and apart from the confusion I was very comfortable. I looked around and noticed straight away that the walls in the room were covered in floral wallpaper similar to the print on the duvet. Well, three of the walls. The fourth wall looked as if it was painted in a light beige colour to contrast with the greens and light browns of the wallpaper and there were floral rugs covering most of the floor. The only furniture seemed to be two small bedside cabinets, painted in a very dark green. My first thought was that this had all been put together by an interior designer or a woman who subscribed to Homes and Gardens. Woman? 

Why did it have to be a woman? Blokes read Homes and Gardens and work as interior designers too. I couldn’t name any straight off, mind you. Oh, yes I could! That chap from the telly, what was he called? Silly sounding first name and a double barrelled surname. Long hair and a flowery cravat. Flowery. Back to the chintz again. My wife came into the room and as she said,

‘You’re running out of time,’ everything suddenly came back into focus. Sharp focus. ‘I’ve made you a cup of tea but I’m not bringing it up here. You’ll never get up if I do. You’ll stay in bed and miss yet another deadline. Anyway the tea’s downstairs on the kitchen table. It’ll be cold if you don’t hurry. Come on get your backside in gear! You’re running out of time!’ With that she shut the bedroom door and was gone.

Running out of time. Me? The supreme Master of Minutes. The Husbander of Hours. The Demon of Days. Well, yes actually, I have missed a couple of deadlines lately. Not my fault of course. Things have a habit of cropping up at the last minute. Unforeseen, unexpected things. There is a school of thought that says you shouldn’t leave things to the last minute but I was expelled from that school some time ago. For instance, the flat tyre on the car the morning we were due to fly to Venice for a romantic weekend away. How was I to know the bloody thing was going to be flat. It’s very easy to say I should have checked the car over the day before. I had a lot on my mind at the time, what with the rate of inflation, influenza epidemics and haemorrhoids. Anyway, we may have missed our plane but we had a lovely night in the Holiday Inn at the airport. 

My feeling of confusion was rapidly being replaced by one of panic. If I was running out of time, what was I supposed to be doing? Obviously I had to go downstairs and drink my tea before it became cold. After that, what? A fidgety, uncomfortable feeling started to creep up my body. It started with a tingling in my toes, then I got wobbly knees and finally a hundred hyper active butterflies were released into my stomach. With the feeling of anxiety came the realisation of what it was that I actually had to do and when I had to do it by. Not impossible by any means. I had done similar things in less time on many occasions. But I was younger then. Full of hope and ambition. What was I now? Full of doubt and last night’s curry. That wasn’t strictly true as the effects of last night’s meal were wearing off. Suddenly full of nervous energy, I dressed, splashed water on my face and ran down the stairs, pausing only briefly to gulp down the lukewarm tea and kiss my wife on my way out of the back door.

It is always a good bet that Barry will be sitting in the window of the coffee shop just off the High Street at eleven thirty and this morning was no exception. When I say sitting in the window I don’t mean like the ladies in the narrow back streets of Amsterdam. Not that I have first hand experience of that sort of thing I hasten to add. Oh no. Just seen documentaries on TV. Anyway, I digress. Barry always tried to get the table near the window because he said it was lighter there than further back in the shop and this helped him read his newspaper. I think he was just too tight to buy a new pair of glasses.

‘Hallo Baz,’ I said entering the shop, ‘need a bit of help, mate.’

‘Go and order a coffee and put it on my tab.’

‘Thanks mate, that’s kind. I’ve come out without my wallet.’

‘Condition Normal.’ Perhaps he wasn’t so tight after all.

I ordered a cappuccino and gingerly sat down as Barry carefully folded his newspaper into ever smaller squares before packing it away in his raincoat which was draped over a spare chair.

‘Yes,’ he said ‘what is it this time?’ The waitress arriving with my drink gave me a few extra moments thinking time and by taking a tentative sip of coffee I gained a few more. But Barry’s stern gaze told me my time was up. I blurted out the dreaded sentence that had been going around in my mind.

‘I’ve got a deadline looming!’

‘Oh for goodness sake!’

‘I’m running out of time and there isn’t a single idea in my mind.’

‘Every bloody time!’ Barry was really annoyed with me, I could tell. ‘Why do you leave everything to the last minute? It’s always the same, you have ages to do something and then you come running to me for help. I’m not a magician, I can’t pull rabbits from hats. Or undo rusty wheelnuts so that you can change a flat tyre.’

‘You said you wouldn’t mention that again.’

‘I know but you’re so flipping predictable. You stagger from one crisis to another.’

We sat in silence for a few minutes, taking occasional sips from our coffee cups. Then when I sensed his mood was mellowing , I cleared my throat and started to speak.

‘Barry, I was wondering…’

‘You were wondering if I had any ideas you could pinch. Or as you like to call it, “borrow”. He glared at me. Then he smiled. ‘Well there is one…’

I ran home, well walked very quickly (you have to be careful at my age) and went straight to my study. Or the cupboard under the stairs as everyone else describes it. My fingers flew over the computer keyboard in a blur and the words poured out at a rate that made the deadline achievable at last.

‘Blimey what’s got into you? You’re not on drugs are you?’ my wife asked as she vacuumed the hall.

‘No. Had a coffee with Baz.’

‘Oh that explains everything,’ she said sarcastically.

‘Told him I was running out of time to write and submit a short story and we came up with this. Here, have a read. What do you think?’

Well, what do you think?