I’m out of order – I’d love to live a life of routine but I’m a creature of chaos

It would seem that routine, regime and habit are key to the good life. The dentist will advise you to follow a strict regime of dental hygiene to ensure your molars remain in situ. The doctor will tell you to follow a consistent exercise routine if you want to stay at the right side of the undertaker.

Becoming a creature of habit is clearly the key to health, well-being and longevity.

Even in the creative world these things are highly regarded. Most successful writers follow a rigorous routine and will tell you that the only way to produce good work is by sitting at the desk, hammering at the keyboard or scribbling at the pad for the length of a working day every day.

Unfortunately wandering around the house scratching yourself and waiting for the muse to inspire is as useful as waiting for lightning to strike.

I’m sorry to say the deadline is my only muse and my one source of discipline. Its looming menace forces me to put one word after another and fill the page before the deadline expires. I have long suspected that my tormented sub-editor has an effigy of me on his desk and after lunch on Friday, when there is no sign of my product popping up on his screen, he proceeds to stick pins in the effigy until I deliver the goods.

My father had great admiration for people of routine, for creatures of habit, describing them as people that “you could set your clock by”. He often extolled their virtues. “Look at that,” he would say, “their cows are in every evening at half four and the supper is over by half seven, how do they do it?”

A certain celebrated neighbour had a pocket watch, one he brought back across the Atlantic with him after a sojourn in the USA. He greatly admired the American approach to time and time-keeping and the pocket watch symbolised this for him. Its hands rigidly dictated the pace of life inside his gate and his front door.

The timepiece was his most treasured possession and was rarely far from his hand, only becoming separated from the warmth of his body when it hung from the headboard at night. But there is no such thing as total security and there is always an opportunist ready to take advantage of the most momentary lapse of vigilance.

On a particularly warm summer day he had a of neighbours gathered to save the hay in a low and heavy meadow that was rarely dry. The heat and the intensity of the work took their toll, causing the great time-keeper to drop his guard.

‘My father had great admiration for people of routine, for creatures of habit, describing them as people that “you could set your clock by”’

He stripped to his shirt and hung the waistcoat, along with the attached timepiece, on an unmanned pitchfork.

The opportunity proved too tempting for a pair of lively young haymakers, who conspired to remove the waistcoat from its perch and rearrange the hands of the watch, reversing them by 20 minutes, an adjustment slight enough to avoid being noticed but significant enough to create bother.

After the work was done the time-keeper put his treasured watch back on and went on to endure a few days of confusion and discombobulation: he turned up late for Mass, missed the bus to Limerick and fell into a huge row with the local publican, who he accused of calling last drinks well before time.

He began to think he was going mad until somebody suggested that perhaps his watch might not be keeping time with the accuracy to which he had become accustomed. He took great exception to the suggestion and, holding open the pocket watch declared, “sun and moon may be wrong but this little machine, never”.

Away from the mocking crowd he quietly readjusted the watch and never let it out of his sight until the eternal sleep fell on his eyelids and he entered a whole new dimension of time.

I tell that story because, having spent the best part of a lifetime on the planet, I have never been able to incorporate routine, regime and admirable habit into the way I live that life.

I sometimes think I am a creature of chaos and would have dissipated into nothingness were it not for the shepherding, corralling and curation of the current consort and a sardonic sub-editor. Maybe it’s not too late.

‘Wandering around the house scratching yourself and waiting for the muse to inspire is as useful as waiting for lightning to strike’