By Annecdotist

Trina gulps her coffee and bites into her toast (the teeth-tingling strawberry jam negating the virtue of the wholemeal bread and thereby triggering the guilt that she never really took advantage of that introductory offer at the gym). As she gulps and bites and cogitates on failed resolutions, she monitors the TV on the kitchen worktop (less for the footage of grieving foreigners that reproaches her for never quite managing to post a cheque after last month’s disaster-relief appeal, but simply for the sake of the virtual clock in the bottom right-hand corner of the screen), and waits for the iron to heat up (regretting squandering two precious hours on that schmaltzy movie last night) while listening to her eldest mumble through his French verbs (deciding his runny nose is no excuse to stay off school), while rehearsing the day’s appointments in her head and wondering if there’ll be time to dash to Sainsbury’s in her lunch break (not unless the meeting keeps to time, which is unlikely) and checking middle-daughter doesn’t try to sneak out in Trina’s own best earrings (yet managing to be grateful the girl’s not yet reached the stage of despising every atom of her mother’s being) and feeding cereal bowls into the dishwasher, which is how she comes to notice her youngest’s PE kit mouldering in a corner on the floor (and regretting, endlessly regretting, she succumbed to that schmaltzy movie when she might have been seeing to the family laundry; baking a cake; teaching her daughter to knit; or authoring a best-selling novel) and all the time… deep breath … asking herself why she always feels so stressed.
Trina takes another gulp of coffee and another bite of toast, and … while … while (yet) … all the time asking herself. Why aren’t there more hours in a day?