How Are You Waiting

You are already busy on your laptop but you answer it anyway. You stick the phone under your shoulder and carry on working while on the phone to your friend making appropriate listening noises!

If you are free you answer it otherwise you let it go on the answer-phone and call back at a time to suit you.

You immediately stop what you are doing, grab the phone and settle down on the sofa for a good catch-up.

Hardly notice, you’ve never been late for a match before. Anyway, it gives you time to catch up with some old workmates you bump into.

Swear quietly as you were desperate for a cup of coffee in the ground before the match and it’s so annoying to see other people walk to the front of the queue.

Wait for the next empty turnstile to open while texting a friend already inside to line up a pint as timing is now rather tight.

Wander over to the cigarette counter, get served pretty quickly and go home to cook a meal. Supermarkets are always busy, what do you expect?

You get in the queue and strike up a conversation with the person in front of you. You discover you know lots of people in common and the time passes quickly.

Ditch the shopping and leave the shop. There’s bound to be something to eat at home and anyway you have far too much to do tonight to face a big queue.

Use the time to catch up with friends on your hands-free kit. It's always been worth every penny – you can even see the point of queues.

Turn round and try and find a different way home using rat-runs and cutting through residential areas. You drive too fast to make up for lost time and get home annoyed that your journey took 10 minutes longer than normal.

Put on some music and even catch up with the news while making a mental note of your tasks for the next day at work. You stay pretty calm and get home 15 minutes late.

This would never happen – after 10 minutes you would have found the manager and asked what the delay was. After 20 minutes you would have left without paying.

You quietly catch the eye of the waiter and explain the problem. You are polite but clear that you had expected to be able to eat within an hour.

You were so busy chatting that you had not noticed the time. You don’t bother asking where your food is as it is obvious the restaurant is busy. It always arrives in the end.

Check on other sites first to see if it is a good deal and then look at the state of your bank balance. After careful reflection you decide you would like it but don’t need it. Maybe next Christmas.

Ring some friends to see what they think of the deal and discover two of them own one anyway. By the time you get off the phone, there’s something good on TV and you think ‘maybe tomorrow’.

Buy it immediately – you know you plan to get one anyway so why wait? It’s a bargain and you can always put it on the credit card.

Get really stressed as you’ve written the day in big red letters in your diary. You leave stroppy messages with the firm, chase the post office and blame yourself for not going to the shop.

Ring up the firm but calmly tell yourself you will always get your money back if the order doesn’t come. You check your bank statement and decide to cancel before the money goes out.

Carry on as normal, deciding it will always come tomorrow, after all you’ve never believed in official deadlines. … but you arrange to go shopping with friends just in case. More fun!

Start looking at the new range of cards the post office is now selling and decide to buy some. As for the car, well surely traffic wardens wouldn’t be that mean at Christmas?

Complain loudly to everyone in the queue, you know this is the last chance to post. By the time you reach the counter you are very rude to the assistant and prepare for battle with any lurking traffic wardens.

Ask the elderly gentleman in front to keep your place while you make a few checks on the car. It’s ok and you bide your time until you are at the front.

Suggest meeting regularly for training sessions along agreed routes but at your own pace ending up with drink in the local…

Explain that running is part of your fitness regime and you’ve completed a half marathon in the past so suggest you enter together as a team but train separately.

You happily slow your pace down; this is about keeping up with a mate, not winning a race. Who cares what time you do?