Three hours a week, reliably, and I will not pretend I have four

Ten years ago I would have told you I could give somebody a whole weekend. I would have believed it, too, and then I would have started missing things around the second month and inventing reasons, and eventually the arrangement would have ended with me apologising and both of us knowing I had never had the time in the first place. That happened. It is the thing I am most embarrassed about in a decade of this.

So now I say three hours. Fifty one, the commuter belt, a job that eats the week and a mother nearby who needs a good deal of me on Saturdays. Three hours, one evening, every week without fail. That is what I have and it is what I offer, and I would rather be judged on keeping it than on the size of it.

What can be done in three hours turns out to be a lot when it is the same three hours every week for years. A house stays on top of itself. A list never grows past a page. Somebody stops thinking about a whole category of things.

Between the sessions I am available in writing and I will do anything that can be done from a desk at odd hours, which is more than people expect.

Not looking for an arrangement that needs weekends. Not looking for anything at short notice. And not looking to be talked into four hours, because four is how the last one ended.