Last week Caroline sent me an Instagram reel that featured a Norwegian word and its English translation. A ‘tidsoptimist’, I discovered, is ‘someone who is overly optimistic about how much time they have, often underestimating how long tasks will take and therefore frequently running late’.
That perfectly describes me. Caroline is punctual to a fault, often arriving early to appointments, and she finds my tardiness intensely irritating. Whenever I have to meet her anywhere – at a friend’s house for dinner, for instance – she will pretend I’m expected 15 minutes beforehand, so when I’m quarter of an hour late I will actually be on time. At one point, she became so fed up with my habit of arriving everywhere at least five minutes late that she put my watch forward by five minutes.
In my defence, I have improved over the course of our married life. When we started seeing each other in 1997, I was habitually half an hour late for everything. Indeed, the fact that she spent so long waiting for me at restaurants and bars was one of the reasons she dumped me after six months.
When I persuaded her to give me another chance two years later, my timekeeping did improve, not least because I was determined to make her my wife. But I did suffer a relapse on the first day of our honeymoon.
As a wedding present to myself, I’d bought a new Skoda Octavia vRS – about the cheapest car on the market that could reach 60mph in under seven seconds and had a top speed of more than 150mph. Given that I lived in Shepherd’s Bush, which back then had yet to be gentrified, I was terrified that if I left it parked outside my flat for the duration of our honeymoon it would be stolen. So I arranged with the dealership I’d bought it from, which was in Greenford, to drop it off for safekeeping on my way to Heathrow.
Caroline, who likes to get to the airport early, was not happy. Not only would the detour delay us, but we had to arrange for a minicab to meet us at the car showroom to take us on to Heathrow. What if it was late? I assured her that because we were travelling in British Airways Club Class – I’d got us a free upgrade to Los Angeles because I was writing about the trip for the Telegraph – we didn’t have to check in until 45 minutes before departure. ‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘I know I like to cut things fine, but I’ve never missed a flight in my life.’
My wife became so fed up with my arriving five minutes late that she put my watch forward by five minutes
Needless to say, the taxi was late and the traffic on the M4 was quite bad, but after a mad dash to the check-in desk we made it with a few seconds to spare. I gave Caroline a complacent smile: You see? There was nothing to worry about.
‘I’m sorry, sir, the flight’s closed,’ said the British Airways customer service agent. I protested that it wasn’t due to take off for another 45 minutes, but she corrected me: ‘Forty four minutes and 30 seconds, sir.’ But when we got there, we were on time, I said. It just took us 30 seconds to catch our breath and find our passports. ‘I don’t make the rules,’ she said.
At that point, Caroline burst into tears – the first time I’d ever seen her cry. I explained to the check-in clerk that we’d just got married, this was the first day of our honeymoon and if we missed the flight she would never forgive me. I even threw in the fact that I’d booked the Leonardo DiCaprio suite at Chateau Marmont and that if we weren’t there to claim it they’d give it to someone else. I thought throwing myself at her mercy in this way would melt her heart, but not a bit of it. ‘In that case, sir, you should have got here on time,’ she said.
The upshot was that instead of spending the first night of our honeymoon in a suite at Chateau Marmont, we checked in to The Castle Hotel in Windsor, having had to settle for seats on another British Airways flight the following day. My efforts to cheer Caroline up by taking her to see Jurassic Park III at the Windsor Odeon, followed by supper at Pizza Express, were not a success. To this day, she hasn’t really forgiven me. Although, she now works in travel PR and frequently has to organise press trips to places like the Maldives, so at least this was good preparation for the deadline-surfing mentality of journalists when it comes to catching flights.
After 24 years together, I still suffer from tidsoptimism, but I’m slightly more realistic than I was. It helps that the combination of the Elizabeth Line and Lime bikes means it takes less time to get around London. Once flying cars are introduced, I won’t ever be late again.
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