Timekeeping…

Arghhhhhhhhhh.

Ok now I admit I’m a bit obsessed about timekeeping, it comes from my parents, they are completely obsessed (which drives me equally potty).  I once turned up to an interview 90 minutes early and am frequently finding myself trying to kill time whilst I wait an inordinate amount of time for appointments.

Since having a baby I have become a lot more laid back about time, I used to hate being late but have come to accept that it’s something you have to live with once you are trying to dress a baby/change nappy/get vaguely clean clothes on yourself/pack mahoosive bag of all the essentials to take with you etc.

However, the Turk has never been great at timekeeping, we joke that he runs on Turkish time (but in actual fact if this were true he’d be two hours early for everything).  In over 10 years of being together he has only been on time once, for our wedding (and that was due to some organisation by my mother, she got the entire Turkish clan and most of the guests there unbelievably early, an impressive achievement).  Even when I was in labour he didn’t show up until the early afternoon, I spent most of the morning reassuring the midwife that I did actually have a husband, he did know I was in labour and that he would be along in just a minute (ha ha ha, I can laugh about it in hindsight…just about).

He’s had several watches as gifts but this doesn’t seem to help the situation.  I assumed that following the baby he would become slightly more reliable.  His job is to renovate our house, which isn’t something that requires a particular focus on time, but I have noticed that tasks seem to take a disproportionate amount of time.  “Working in the garden until tea time” often finds him returning home just as I’m putting Jem to bed 2 hours after we’ve eaten.  No amount of warnings or countdowns seem to speed up the process.  This is amusing perhaps from the outside, but when you have a child who needs constant occupation and can’t be left on the floor for fear he’ll eat the screws/screwdrivers/cat food/white spirit laying around whilst the Turk is “mid-renovation” it makes preparing any food a big issue, hence my desire to have the Turk around to entertain the boy while I cook.

Whilst the greatness of the Turks lateness does drive me slowly insane, it also makes me wonder if the Turklish boy we’ve created will actually turn out to be a perfect mix of each…the Goldilocks of timekeeping perhaps.