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Saturday 11 October 2008

Better always late than selectively late

Better always to be late than selectively so

A defence of the neglected virtue of punctuality

Offer him a ticket to Arsenal, though, and he’s there by the big Arsenal sign at Drayton Park on the dot of 2.45 p.m., giving him plenty of time to cater to his desires: to buy something to eat, get a programme and settle into his seat before the 3 p.m. kick-off. He applies the same rules to other things he wants to do — he’s always on time to, say, meet an attractive woman, catch a plane to pick up an Oscar, get to the fridge.

At least Mr Aka’s compatriots are late for everything, and not just the things they don’t want to do: the organisers of the Punctuality Night competition said there was a chronic sociological problem across the board when it comes to punctuality. But it is surely better to have a deeply unreliable approach to all meetings, whether they involve duty or pleasure, than to distinguish between the two, like my friend.

It doesn’t take much amateur psychology to work out how the selective latecomer’s mind works — he is happier to force displeasure on someone else than to deny himself a pleasure. Habitual selective lateness is a sort of social code: ‘I am so important that it doesn’t matter if I’m late or not.’ 

Some selective latecomers follow an even more wicked form of the code, which goes something like, ‘It’s actually positively stylish of me to be late, and how dreary and bourgeois of you to mind waiting for me.’ I can hear this evil lot sniggering over my shoulder as I write: ‘Did you read that dull, pedantic article in The Spectator? What a horrid little show-off.’ To damn a virtue as a smug, small-minded, outdated ritual is an effective game, and you can play it with all sorts of things — spelling, grammar, thank-you letters.

Punctuality is an absolute virtue, if not a cardinal one. It may not be right up there with faith, hope and charity. Rather it borrows major attributes from grander ones: it shows selflessness, where lateness shows selfishness; loyalty to one person and one appointment ahead of the ever-shifting, whim-driven behaviour of the latecomer.  

How gratifying to hear, then, that the Queen is on the side of the bourgeois pedants on this one (and I’ll bet those stylish latecomers are exactly the same sort of superior lot who like to show how grand they are by saying how middle-class the royal family is). In the new edition of King’s Counsellor, edited by Duff Hart-Davis, Tommy Lascelles, private secretary to George VI and Queen Elizabeth II, tells how cross our future Queen got with her mother for being late on a royal tour of South Africa in 1947.

More articles from: Harry Mount | this section

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