LEVEL 1.5 PATIENCE

There might be a third type of patience: the type required to wait for your computer to install Windows updates.

This is my own fault, this one. I forgot to switch off on Friday (as requested by the IT elves) and so I rebooted this morning. I'm currently watching it install update 61 of 214.

This Level 1.5 Patience is a kind of mezzanine between waiting for something that will definitely happen and waiting for something that might not. There is every chance that Windows will make it to update 214 and install the lot properly; there's equal chance it will fail. What there's no predicting, is how long this digital ballet will take.

There is one small certainty with Level 1.5 Patience though: I can't do anything at all about it. I have no choice but to wait until it's finished, whether I do that here, watching the blue screen, or in the kitchen with a cup of Darjeeling and a ginger biscuit. It'll take however long it takes.

It's made it to update 85 in the time it took to think of all that. Everyone around me is busily tapping away, shuffling into the meeting room or chatting about the weekend. I'm sitting here, tapping into my phone.

Come to think of it, Level 1.5 Patience is the patience you need in a restaurant, or while waiting for your car to be fixed. It's not the ongoing patience you need to be polite to someone unbearable, and it's not the cool, calm patience you need when you're waiting for the on-time train. 

Neither is it the type you need while waiting to throttle Bill Gates or at least blow a big raspberry in the direction of Seattle. It's the measured self-control required to watch a ticking clock, to long for the numbers to speed up and to hope that your computer might just hurry through updates 134 to 214 like there's no tomorrow.

Actually I think a cup of Darjeeling and a ginger nut might be just the thing.