The Waiting Game

 I’ve been thinking a lot about waiting recently. This morning, I was in a queue of over 30 to get a call back from the doctor’s surgery. Just to arrange a phone consultation. That’s three times now I’ve rung to make an appointment to discuss test results. This kind of waiting is dispiriting. But at least with the wonderful (mostly) technology of mobile phones I was able to carry on with my morning dog walk. And I’d like to say my walk was filled with productive writerly thoughts. Sadly the reply came that there were no appointments left and I needed to try again the next day. I suppose I got a bit of a blog theme out of my following grumpiness so not all bad… 

So, my random thoughts on waiting took me back to the '70s and good old R.I.E (Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh to the uninitiated). When a ward was on call for emergencies it was ‘waiting’. If things got too challenging another ward would take over the mantle. When waiting is difficult for us as solitary writers can we share our troubles with others? (We’re reading / writing this blog, so of course we know we can!). 

Then there was the long wait. Or rather the ‘long stand’. When naive new student nurses got sent to another ward for a long stand. That really was frustrating and pointless waiting. Now, every day is a school day, because I never knew it went further than a drip stand in nursing. I refuse to reveal whether I was ever a drip or not… 

An imaginary object that someone is instructed to request from someone else, who then proceeds to  leave them standing around waiting indefinitely while it is being "located." A practical joke usually   played on a new member of a group or organization. A: "The other guys told me to go ask the foreman for a long stand, and he just left me waiting for nearly an hour before I finally gave up!" B: "Gosh, did you really not  understand that they were pulling your  leg?"

https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/a+long-stand 

We probably all have countless examples of waiting times in our writing lives, good and bad, profitable and less so. Waiting for an answer to a submission. Perhaps we might not even get a reply, so no use hanging around there.  Waiting for the muse to appear. Well, we all know the answer to that one, don’t we? Just crack on anyway. Waiting for the time, not even the right time, just time, to write. 

I keep saying to anyone that will listen that I am passionate about the book I am writing. But am I? I was confessing to a writer friend recently that it was getting sidelined. She pointed out that I’m currently working on other stuff and when we have a commission the personal writing gets pushed out. True enough in one way. But surely I can find just a little waiting time each day to focus on something that is so vital to me.

There are many how to tips that tell us how to use those times of waiting in our lives to the best advantage. A word of caution though. We must not be so throng filling up the waiting times with technology (e.g) that we lose sight of the pure time where we silently wait on God. 

Going back to my project: Something happened only a few days later which rekindled my enthusiasm  and made me see that there is no logic in waiting till all those pesky ducks are in a row. They might well be playing a game of hide and seek and you’ve just got to get on rounding them up. 

I thought I was far too busy to hang around for coffee after Mass on Thursday morning. Just a quick one maybe. Long story short, an hour later I left the church having had the most amazing conversation with a lady I’d never met before, who had spent many days and weeks waiting beside her daughter’s hospital bed. During that time she had discovered the therapeutic power of knitting. The book was on its way again. Not only that, mother and daughter had put a new spin on pompom making. Bind up your worries as you spin the yarn round and around. Then release them as you snip away with scissors. Give the pompom a bit of a ruffle up and see how different you feel. I shall never look at pompoms… or waiting… in quite the same way again.

Liz Pacey is a Reader at St Alban's Church, Hull, 

and has a special interest in writing about knitting and spirituality.