Neil McNicholas: Just in time to inconvenience everyone else

I was at a James Taylor concert in Manchester last week and 45 minutes into a two-hour show people were still arriving and, with no consideration for the disturbance they were causing, rather than wait for a break between songs, they made everyone in their row stand as they picked their way past: “Sorry... excuse me... I’m really sorry... thank you... excuse me please... sorry...”

And it wasn’t just the odd one or two who, for example, may have been unavoidably delayed by traffic on the M62. No, people were drifting in late all the time. When you have paid those kind of prices for a ticket, and if you are such a great James Taylor fan in the first place, why would people not be there on time?

Having said that, the concert itself began well over 10 minutes late. West End shows never start on time either. It’s as if someone peers out from behind the curtain and, seeing how many seats are still empty, decides it would be better to wait for the late-comers to arrive than have them disturb everybody – and the performance – when they finally get there. But it’s the thin end of the wedge because, knowing things no longer start on time, people simply arrive even later.

It’s the same with social gatherings since the ubiquitous “7:30 for 8” mentality developed or “ish” time, as in 10ish or 4ish, both of which simply give people permission to be late because no one really knows when something will start and it plays right into the hands of those who think the world revolves around them and that nothing will start until they arrive.

I can’t tell you how much time I have spent hanging around outside my parish churches waiting for workmen who were late for appointments I had made with them. Of course it was all my fault because I hadn’t realised they were using “ish” time whereas I was using GMT or BST.

So I would wait and wait (but never longer than ten minutes, a rule-of-thumb to avoid growing old on street corners) and then leave because I had other things to do. And then perhaps half an hour later I would get a phone call from a perplexed workman unable to grasp the concept of why I wasn’t still there waiting for him.

The same thing happens with people who want to come and see me about baptisms or weddings or the like. We will arrange a specific time and I always assume (obviously mistakenly) that a meeting with “the priest” is important enough that people will be on time, but they aren’t.

It just doesn’t seem to matter, nor is there any concept that you have other things to do and other people to see and that’s why you gave them a particular time. Why do people think that if they have an appointment, it’s okay to show up 15 or 20 minutes late? And why do they assume you will still be waiting?

Maybe the way our society is heading in this respect is yet another consequence of our membership of the EU, or our experience of holidaying around the Mediterranean, and that the loose relationship that some nationalities have with time is beginning to rub off? Maybe that’s where the concept of “ish” time came from. However, until they make bendy clocks and watches (like something Salvador Dali might have painted) that tell equally bendy time, it is simply bad manners to be late.

Being late, or rather being tardy, seems to be almost a badge of honour with some people. The word “tardy” sounds vaguely amusing, but it isn’t, it means you are late. Some people are perpetually tardy, you could almost set your watch by them (except not really), and they seem to think it makes them a bit of a character and that people will excuse their tardiness as if it was involuntary, like a nervous tic. The fact that they are wasting people’s time waiting for them to show up doesn’t seem to bother them at all.

And so in strolled those late-comers at the concert. James Taylor had flown in from the United States and he was on time. We had driven 150 miles from the other side of the country and we were on time. What was their excuse? Or maybe they didn’t think they needed one. “Sorry... excuse me... I’m really sorry... thank you... excuse me please... sorry...”

Father Neil McNicholas is a priest for St Hilda’s Parish, Whitby.