I'm on the train! by Wendy Perriam Page B

It’s a good thing to waste time. Otherwise it becomes a sort of tyranny that demands your total servitude. Besides,’ he asked, ‘where will it ever end, as time gets more andmore precise? It used to be measured in a rough and ready way – sunrise, sunset, time to milk the cows, or get up, or go to bed – but now we have nanoseconds, for God’s sake! Forget nanoseconds – I prefer not to wear a watch at all. OK, I need one for work, but at home, I don’t keep track of time, unless I absolutely have to. I regard it as an artificial concept, imposed on us by employers and bureaucracies, or other glutting cretins who want to tell us how to live.’ He tapped his fingers sharply on the book, to express his disapproval. ‘I also feel strongly about the evil of possessions. I’ve cut mine down to just the bare essentials, but you should see some of my friends! They own so many things, they move around like spiders in their webs, clinging to the honey-trap of swanky consumer goods.’
    Josh would fit that description, she thought, disloyally. Wasn’t he overly attached to his BlackBerry, his home cinema and home exercise machine, his Sony Surround-Sound system and all his other executive toys? Yet who was she to talk, with her expensive cache of shoes and bags, her state-of-the-art mobile and self-important watch?
    ‘Why are they even called “goods”,’ he demanded, ‘when all they do is perpetuate desire? I detest the very idea of being a “consumer”. That word for me is just a term for meaninglessness and greed.’
    She tried to put up a defence; riled that this romanticizing zealot should keep laying down the law. ‘Josh believes there’s nothing wrong with being rewarded for hard work and, since we live in a technological world, why not take advantage of it and buy stuff that makes life easier?’
    ‘Because it doesn’t, Alice – it makes things much more complicated . And, anyway, we soon become slaves to our possessions, or start craving bigger and better ones. What your boyfriend fails to understand is that being is more important than doing. That’s obvious from his attitude to time. If every single minute of his existence is so rigidly controlled, when can he simply sit and think, or follow up some random idea that might flit into his mind? And what about those transcendental moments triggered by a song, or sunset, or by some sudden new perspective, that frees you from yournormal narrow confines? They’re impossible unless you have some leisure time. Besides, if he’s tied to a job, nine till five – or eight till seven, or whatever hours he works – there’s no scope for spontaneity . Let’s say he felt the urge to take himself to Mongolia, or Bhutan, or any damned place, for that matter, just because he felt a need to see them, or could experience a different way of life there, how could he just drop everything and go?’
    She tried to imagine Josh popping off to Bhutan, simply on a whim, and with a bedroll on his back, rather than leaving for the office on the dot of seven each morning, immaculately attired and armed with his laptop in its special designer case. This self-righteous beanpole really didn’t have a clue. Yet, for some inexplicable reason, she found him disconcertingly sexy – all the more bizarre when she was never normally turned on by scruffy clothes and stubble. And, although he wasn’t sporting red socks, even his grubby white ones were somehow strangely appealing, and she found her eyes returning to the small stretch of naked flesh exposed between his boots and tattered jeans.
    Fortunately, his attention was now claimed by a middle-aged couple, who had come downstairs to the foyer and were asking about a film that wasn’t actually showing at the Curzon. A good chance, she thought, to cut short their encounter before she made a fool of herself.
    ‘I think I’ll go and get a drink,’ she said, once he had redirected the couple to the Empire, Leicester Square.