Welcome to Letters From the Knot, a free newsletter, primarily built as an outlet for a fiction writing project I’m working on. On the weeks I’m not publishing fiction, though, I’ll be sending something a bit more freeform and personal. This is one of those.
So, imagine you’re having a house party, and you tell people to turn up from 7, assured that people will understand the unwritten rule of these things and start turning up from maybe 8:30. When 7 comes, you’re chilling. You’ve moved the furniture around and you’re getting a playlist ready. Maybe your flatmate is googling a recipe for a big batch of negronis. You’ve not got changed yet but the vibes are good and you’re having a nice time and anyway it’s only 7 and people won’t be here for ages.
Well guess again because you invited me to this party and I’ll be there at 7:01 with a four pack of Neck Oil and the cheapest bottle of prosecco they had in Tesco’s and now you’re going to have to finish the party prep with me following you around. Best case scenario you can rope me in and I’ll help chop some limes but more than likely you’re going to have to park me in front of the crisps and dips and have an awkward half-shouted conversation with me while you bustle around in the other room making the final preparations.
This is my curse. The curse of punctuality. It has its roots in a good place. I’ve always seen punctuality as a form of respect for the time of others. And that’s true in many cases (cinema, fancy restaurant booking, work meeting) but I’ve so deeply internalised the righteousness of punctuality that I seemingly can’t be late, even where social norms dictate it’s actually more polite to be late than on time.
With any luck, you (the host) will have invited some other punctual freak to your party. Then you can leave us to it. We have a kind of unspoken accord, the punctual people. A quick glance around the room confirms it’s just the two of us and we settle in to our marriage of convenience. I’ve spent the first hour of many house parties chatting to some friend of a friend about how they’re getting into bitcoin, or just moved here from Australia, or they’re waiting to hear back about their Arts Council funding. There’s every chance I’ll never speak to this person again, even later at the same party, but we’ve saved one another, and the host, from a terrible social bind. We’re complicated heroes, solving only the problems we create.
For a long time I tried to combat this instinct. I would try to hold out as long as possible before leaving the house. I’d take the bus instead of the train, maybe stop for a pint on the way, walk the last bit of the journey, but somehow something always happens. I lose track of things and, by the time the mist clears, I’m at the end of your street. At best it’s half past but it would stupid to turn back now and surely I can’t be the first. (I’m always the first.)
As I get older, I’ve come to accept this about myself. Sure I get a lot of shit from people, but being the first at a party is a power move. You can take a prime position by the snacks, say hi to people as they come in. If you arrive at a party late, you’re immersing yourself into a complicated and bustling social environment. You’ve got no leads! But if you get there first you can establish a rapport with people one by one, develop a few in-jokes, warm up your social muscles. Play your cards right and, before long, you’ll have ditched the other punctual people and you’ll be the life and soul!
In truth, being in my mid-thirties means the house parties are drying up a little, but punctuality still has its perks. If I’m meeting certain friends at the pub, I look forward to them being late. There’s nothing like getting to a pub early, reading a book and sinking half a pint. I value this time so much that I’ve started turning up half an hour early just in case the other person is on time. This is my curse.
This newsletter is a defence of punctuality as both a lifestyle choice and an unalterable character trait. But this newsletter is also an apology. First to all the hosts who I’ve ambushed seconds past the hour and forced to entertain me while they try to hoover. But also to my partner who I frequently drag into the world of the punctual and who, though not naturally inclined in that direction, has reluctantly joined this special league of weirdos. And finally, this newsletter is a warning to anyone considering inviting me to anything. Think carefully about what time you tell me to be there, because I will be there.
Cultural indigestion
Some things I’ve been consuming this month.
Reading - I’ve recently finished Days Without End by Sebastian Barry which I could tell almost within a chapter would be a winner. It’s a relatively epic novel about a young Irish immigrant in 19th century America who, having fled famine, gets drawn into a the life of a soldier during the Civil War. It might sound dry based on that description, but it’s a hugely romantic story about the relationships formed on the journey, and the challenge of finding a place, and of finding love, in a world that values your life so little. In other hands it might feel rambling and overlong but it’s so so beautiful and evocative at a sentence level, and the voice of the narrator is so compelling, that I got completely swept away by it. I also read an unusual sci fi novel called The Animals in That Country by Laura Jean McKay, which tells the story of a plague that makes communication between animals and humans possible. What follows is not some Dr Doolittle fantasy, but a more grounded and disturbing imagining of the freaky and unknowable thoughts of animals. It’s a kind of sci-fi I like - not too concerned with neat edges, it takes a speculative “what if” question, and the answer is basically just “something confusing and fucked up happens”.
Watching - There seems to be very little debate about how incredible The Zone of Interest is. I think one of the smartest things about it is the extent to which it plays on our collective understanding of the visual language of the holocaust. This film wouldn’t work if the maker wasn’t confident that the audience would have a shared and immediate understanding of, say, a plume of steam from an approaching train. It plays with the fact that the holocaust has become such a familiar part of our shared historical understanding that it’s almost normalised - a pertinent message when a genocide is being normalised even as I write this.
Listening -
From one early bird to another, I feel seen