Sorry I’m late. Really, really sorry. You know how it is:
things to do, deadlines to hit, tubes running late, phone rings as you’re
leaving the office…

Time. What on earth can we do about time? When you’re rushed
there’s too little of it. When you’re sad or lonely, there’s way too much of
it. It really does stretch and shrink. And usually in the opposite direction
you want it to go.

It’s a constant battle, with time winning every time.

Which is why, at the grand old age of 59 I decided to write
a book. The fact that it’s taken me to 61 to finish it is just another example
of time taking over. Everything took longer than I had expected; free time in
which to do it seemed less and sometimes in what free time I had I simply
couldn’t be arsed. The muse had left the building.

Until I heard my oldest, best friend got cancer.

Gill and I used to live near each other. Now I’m in London
and she’s out in the sticks, so for the last few years meeting up has been
sporadic, supplemented by phone calls. Both of us at fault, of course, both
busy, me with work and she with her now teenage daughter.

We used to joke that when we were old we would end up living
on a beach together, two old biddies, toes in the sand, drinking margaritas.

Now we spend a whole day together every three weeks. Eight,
sometimes ten hours at a stretch, side by side in armchairs in the oncology
unity at Hammersmith Hospital, while they pump her full of chemo.

We laugh a lot. I make a picnic so that we are on a
metaphorical beach, the location indicated by the menu.

And I, who cannot be prised from phone and emails, put it
all down and am just there.

I, who hasn’t taken a day off for months and months, who
cancels personal events because I ‘have to work’, block out a day every three
weeks plus the days for scan results and think nothing of it at all.

Gill feels that I have been a gift to her – being there able
to listen to doctors and question when she’s too scared to remember what’s been
said or challenge what she’s being told. To just sit for endless hours of drips
and cold caps and blood tests and results and waiting and crying.

Gill’’s gift to me has been priceless. The value of time.

My entire use of time has changed. Now, I do what I want to
do and need to do with full focus and attention. I don’t stress (so much) about
having too much on. I just get up earlier or stay up later.

I socialise properly and lavishly with people I want to be
with, not half-heartedly with lukewarm wine and tepid ‘friends’.

I consciously ask myself ‘Is this how I really want to spend
of my time now?’ Because when it’s spent, there’s no getting it back.

And I finished the book. The muse still went AWOL quite a
lot so I decided that Dorothy Parker was right when she said "Writing is
the art of applying the ass to the seat."

It’s called ‘The Kama Sutra of Work: Why work is the new sex
and how to make sure you’re getting enough,’ and it’s ready for pre-order now
on Amazon and Waterstones, and is out at the end of this month.

Buy lots please. And then I’ll buy two business class
tickets to somewhere hot with ice cold margaritas for me and Gill.

Toes in the sand…