On Late Arrivals

I don’t know if you watched a TV show by the comedian Jon Richardson the other night about OCD (Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder). It certainly put into perspective what I’ve stupidly called quiz compulsive disorder before. Wanting to play in a lot of quizzes, and being constantly half on the look out for potential questions, that’s neither compulsive, nor a disorder, irritating though it may be to one’s nearest and dearest.

Therefore I don’t say that what I’m going to describe now is a disorder, or even a compulsion. Still, I thought I’d tell you about it anyway. Mrs. Londinius is currently learning to drive. Her mother sent her a Smart car from Spain as an early birthday present, and so she thought it would probably be a good idea if she learned how to use it. OK, so far so good. On a Wednesday evening she often goes to a sewing class. Rather than driving her there and picking her up myself, she drove in the Smart, with me in the passenger seat. Now, on the way home, it seemed to me that we were going the wrong way. “No, no, “ she replied, “we’re just going to do a little shopping in Tescos . “ ( By the way, Lord Tesco, if you are reading this there’s no charge for the product placement, but if you wanted to send a present, then you can email me for the address to send it to ) – Where’s the problem with that ? – you may ask. There really isn’t a problem, except that it did mean that instead of arriving home by about 10 to 9, we didn’t get back until about quarter past.

I had planned to walk down the road to the Grand Hotel, which has been hosting a quiz since about March of this year, and check it out. It’s advertised as starting at 9. The problem being that I have a real phobia of being late for things. In all honesty I would rather be an hour early for something than 10 minutes late. Now, the rational part of my brain knows that this is rather ridiculous, but this isn’t something that is processed by the rational part of my brain, because it happens at a gut level, a visceral level. The thought of being late just makes me extremely uncomfortable. I absolutely hate it on the odd occasions when events conspire to prevent me from being at the rugby club on a Thursday night by 9, even though it never starts before quarter past. So there’s absolutely no way I was going to walk down to the Grand on the offchance that it was a 9 for 9:30 quiz. Maybe next week.

The really stupid thing is that it doesn’t bother me at all when other people turn up late to one of my quizzes. I’ll be honest, I’m not really sure what the etiquette generally is for late arrivals. I mean, I do tend to think that it’s good manners to turn up on time if you are intending to play, but I’d never draw attention to anyone who doesn’t, or treat them any differently from any of the other people taking part. Is this the general thing around the country , I wonder ?