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So it’s just gone 9.08am and I am already having, what Mary Kate and I often refer to as  a Henry Hill kinda day.  If you can cast your mind back to 1990’s Good Fellas you will know exactly what I mean.  It was a movie with a huge cast not the least of which was Ray Liotta starring as the ne’er do well Mafia wanna be and it is to his character I allude.  Henry Hill was a real life guy who wanted to “get made” in a big kinda way such that he took on all sorts of horrendous tasks in the hopes that he would get brought into the fold even though it was nearly impossible given his non-Italian heritage.  What you really need to know about Henry is that by the end of the movie, Martin Scorsese shows how his life spiralled out of control such that just before he gets nabbed by the Feds(through whom he later agrees to join a Witness Protection programme, dimes out his old Mafia buddies and eventually relates the Good Fellas story) he is juggling just too many things at one time.  There’s a frantic scene which documents the day Henry got caught that Mary Kate and I are reminded of.  It shows him doing drugs at 6.55am (we don’t do drugs but it is part of the story so stick with me), buying and selling illegal guns (don’t do that either), driving like a lunatic and nearly crashing his car (okay, maybe sometimes I do that), picking his wheelchair bound brother up from physical therapy, planning and preparing a meal requiring braising beef and pork butt for his tomato sauce (definitely me – taking on a complicated recipe), collecting his wife to help pick up cocaine he is sorting out for his babysitter to run down to Atlanta while all along getting tracked by a police helicopter.  I promise in no way shape or form are Mary Kate and I doing any of the illegal stuff that Henry is getting up to, but the way Scorsese shows how increasingly stressed out Henry gets, sweating and glancing worriedly up at the helicopter while trying to stuff in as many activities as possible – I don’t know, I some how identify with that feeling some days.  That push on my life’s accelerator and jam on the brakes as I try and get all the logistics of coordinating our family of five to run as smoothly as possible.  The scene resonates with me.

My Henry Hill day started at 6.00am when I listened to the travel report to make sure traffic was flood free and flowing fine for our imminent school runs then I slurped a cup of tea Nick had kindly delivered to my bedside before going to prod Megan for the third time to wake up and take a shower (the girl loves to get clean but waking up – not so much), I grabbed my iPhone playing BBC Kent Radio so I could listen to the latest on the Crimea and the missing Malaysian plane while I ironed a shirt each for the girls remembering last minute that Skyler has to wear his sports kit today for his rugby house matches.  As it was still drying I threw the lot in for a spin while I pressed out the wrinkles on the shirts. Meanwhile, as the cats nearly bite my ankles if I don’t feed them immediately, I set out their wet food and sprinkled it with dry just how they like it while I heard Winston whine to come back in for his food which I’d just chucked in the bowl.  Uniforms sorted, teenagers and almost ten year old up and now down for breakfast, I made Megan’s lunch and then dashed upstairs to brush my teeth and get dressed only to notice Nick had left his Parking Permit for the Station Car Park which starts today (of course) on the dresser.  I tried ringing him and then texted to let him know it was here but that I couldn’t go stick it in his car ahead of any parking wardens because after I did the school run (dropped Megan down to her bus stop and then came back to collect Christy and Skyler to head off to Caterham) I needed to come home directly as I had a courier scheduled to deliver Megan’s new US passport “some time between 9 and 1” and as it was the third time I’ve tried to sign for it I did not want to miss them.  Nick was updated and then I got my second round of riders into the Bennett Landrover Bus only to have the fuel gauge ping that it was near empty!  AAAAAAAHHHHH!

So it’s 11.40 now and I’ve thrown in more laundry, loaded the dishwasher, made some of the beds, eaten a bowl of cereal, popped my Tamoxifen, met the courier (who strangely looked exactly like the dancing backward speaking dwarf from Twin Peaks but I digress), had the boiler serviced and come back to writing to you.

All along, my thoughts continue to consider how pressed for time we can all feel and how much we are able to cram into an increment of time.  Now, I’m gonna go all cinematic on you today while thinking of time and different strategies on how we manage it and maybe even measure it and I can’t help recalling Hugh Grant’s Will Freeman from Nick Hornsby’s About A Boy and his allocation of life into 30 minute intervals as “whole hours can be intimidating”.  Will has a system of breaking his day down into these units so he can pass his time effectively  only to have it all work for awhile until “a boy” happens to come into his life.  Until then whether willing to admit it or not, Will is rather bored with his life not needing to work and having no relationships of real meaning to him but then a kid comes along and messes with everything – his schedule, his priorities, his boundaries.  He can no longer be the island he loves to profess himself to be and he is forced to branch out and broaden his life and in so doing enriches it above and beyond the inheritance royalties he has luxuriated in his pre-boy time.

Thinking of Will reassures me that the way I’ve chosen to allocate my time, no matter how frenetically, has been in the best way possible.  I love the way I have peopled my life with not just my kids and Nick and friends near and far, but I’ve left it open to some flexibility allowing for opportunities for restoration, refinement and always reflection.  I’m pleased when I look back over the last 47 years I can sit comfortably with the life I have come to lead along the way.  I know I will have Henry Hill days that exhaust me to the point of near hysterical hyperventilation.   At the same time, I know there will be days also mixed in that slow down to a pace when my units of time drift along so pleasingly I am afforded moments to enjoy and even give sincere thanks for them.  Days like this past Wednesday when my evening ended with Skyler crawling into Nick’s free side of the bed (he was on a business trip and we were having a “sleep over”) and asking if before we went to sleep we could work on the crossword.  The deal is, where Skyler can, he fills in the answers then when he gets stuck I see if I can work out the clue and then give him hints without telling him the word.  He was making good progress until he came across the clue “4-letters  Mothers of a flock” and asked if I could help.  I started with “What would you call the mothers of a flock of SHEEP?” and he said, “Let’s see, I know the babies are called lambs and the dads are – rams, right?”.  I concurred and waited.  He then said “Now what are the mums called?”  and I said “Here’s your hint:  I love You.” emphasizing the “y” to lead him to the puzzle answer “EWES”.  He paused only a moment and  replied, “Yams?!  Mother sheep must be called Yams.”  It totally cracked me up.  That unit of time got marked and measured with a laugh; the best kind of unit of scale I can think of.

So I finish this post asking who wouldn’t want their tidy schedule organised around, if not dictated by, a kid who likes to do crosswords and crack funny jokes?  I know having a good laugh just before bed is a small thing and then again, it might be a mother/son thing, either way my boy definitely makes my some times harrassing schedule with its sometimes inherent hiccups worth it!