2 MARCH 1985, Page 26

Hour by Hour

The number of hours in stock for each of us is tiresomely finite. Stamped and docketed, they grin up at you from the shelves of the cellar where it is too dark to count.

How to use the ones at the front is the first problem: frighteningly they melt away — in bus queues, in adversarial dramas over drains; in sleeping things off. Sometimes someone scoops up their whole shelf-full and throws them out of the window, murmuring 'It's the only language they understand.'

Connie Bensley