Clock watching... In more ways than one.

One of the things I hate about working in the evenings more than anything has got to be the relentless feeling of keeping your eyes glued to the clock, or to your phone. It's almost like a nervous habit of mine, and I'm sure I'm not the only person who does it, but boy it sure feels like it.

Every five or so minutes, I fumble around in the arse pocket of my jeans for my phone and check the time. It's not for messages, it's not for missed calls, it's always for the time. Anyone could be trying to contact me and I couldn't care less, just as long as I know that the passage of time hasn't sped up miraculously in the last six minutes.

I'm much worse if you put me in a room with a clock and my phone. The time on my phone is ten minutes fast... Now I know that a lot of people do this; Ten minutes fast on whatever time keeping device it is they use and the theory is that they will always be a few minutes early, but it never ever works that way. The presence of the second clock for me is the best evidence for it. Firstly, there's the frantic scrabbling in the back pocket for the phone, checking the time, then looking at the clock. You go from panic, to relief then to smug self satisfaction in a matter of seconds. Panic; Shit, what's the time?! Relief; Oh, it's ok. Self Satisfaction; Well, it's even earlier than I thought. I can relax and feel good about my time keeping.

Thing is, my time keeping is terrible. I'm always without fail about half an hour early for work, so I just sit in the staff room listening to music. So any time I have saved I just waste. I do believe that there is an earlier post about my relationship with time, and it's still true... Time is easy to waste for me, so why on Earth when I save it do I then just let it slip out of my hands?
There are untold hours where I was doing absolutely nothing that i will never get back.

We're also clock watching now because the gig is only two days away now! Yay! I'm still bricking it though. I spent an hour just practicing one particularly difficult bit of guitar playing because it still gives me the most trouble, and live that's where we'll suffer... if the intricate details aren't ironed out, then we'll sound out of our depth. You don't want that on a bands first gig.

Furthermore, one more reason to clock watch : "The Dark Knight." The new Batman film with the late Heath Ledger and the ever brilliant Christian Bale. Apparently required reading for Ledger for the role of the Joker was a graphic novel called "The Killing Joke."

Now, you and I will both agree, that pictures of Ledger as the Joker were... disturbing. And you can see that out of the required reading, he did well.


R.I.P. I suppose. But at least in this instance, watching the clock is worth it. We'll see the newly reinvigorated Batman franchise in the best shape its ever been and we'll see a star turn from an actor who deserves to be remembered as an excellent method actor.

As for me, I'll have one eye on the clock, one on my phone, and a hand poised to circle a day on the calender.