It’s timely that I have become a basket case

I’VE become a total catastrophist. It appears to be another symptom of age. I often watch elderly people fretting about appointments and airing their concerns about what could go wrong and I used to become exasperated by their foibles. Now, unfortunately, I have joined the brigade. I’m now a firm believer in Murphy’s law.

When I’m flying, I cannot bear people who endeavour to make it an achievement to be proud of arriving exactly an hour before take-off. I have to be there with at least three hours to spare. I have to allow for a delay at check-in, huge numbers going through security and any ridiculous mishap that could occur. Like the crew deciding to take off early if everyone is there or me being taken into a side room because my tweezers was left in my bag. Invariably, the gate number hasn’t been decided by the time I get to the air side of security.

The last time I got the air coach, which is a five-minute drive from my house, the taxi man inquired as to whether I was getting the one that left an hour before the one I was actually booked on to. And it was lashing rain. And I had to wait in the rain for an hour for the coach. I had always been on time when I was young. I would be the one to arrive before the guy I was meeting at Roches Stores and I would wait around a corner and appear five minutes after he arrived. I did get a few ‘fiftys’, as we say in Cork. I think I relaxed a little during my middle years and was capable of being a fashionable 10 minutes late, but as I get older, I’m turning into a basket case. The fact that I have a daughter whose speciality is being late and I regularly have to break traffic lights to get her to her destination has maybe pushed me over the edge. But over the edge I most definitely am.