always be somewhere trying to be each other, forever and ever, and always trying to come back for me to straighten them out.
Were there Hours out in the world that were sick hours, sick because we had treated them badly, and always trying to come back for folk to make them well?
And were there Hours that were busy and happy somewhere because they had been well used and they didn’t have to try to come back for us to patch them up?
Were Hours like that? Was Time like that?
When I told Delia of the incident, she at once characteristically settled it.
“Why, if they wasn’t any time,” she said, “we’d all just wait and wait and wait. They couldn’t have that. So they set something going to get us going to keep things going.”
Sometimes, in later life, when I have seen folk lunch because it is one o’clock, worship because it is the seventh day, go to Europe because it is Summer, and marry because it is high time, I wonder whether Delia was not right. Often and often I have been convinced that what Mother told me about the Hours trying to come back to get one to straighten them out is true
