Should `killing time`..be a crime?

We`ve all done it. I`ve kicked my heels on railway station platforms up and down the land, willing the train to arrive. Gazed distractedly at stuff in shop windows I`d never buy....because I`m too early for the hairdresser. Sat frowning in cold, dark car parks, wondering why my daughters were always the last to emerge from rehearsals. And got angry in soulless, hospital clinics,wondering how to annihilate the estimated `hour`s waiting time` until the doctor`s free.

Yes there are books to read. Yes there`s Twitter to amuse you.But more often than not in those situations, I just sit there getting angry. Killing time.

And then you read something like this on Twitter, from Kate Granger (@GrangerKate ). `I love autumn `, she wrote.`Make the most of this one as may not see another.` With a picture of a beautiful, autumnal tree. A few days earlier, Kate had posted that it would be her birthday soon. ` Really don`t feel much like celebrating,` she said, `but will probably be my last, so should make the effort.`

Kate`s a doctor, and has terminal cancer. I haven`t met her, but I wish I could. She sounds strong, feisty, incredibly bright, and determined, daily, to make a difference in the health service, by improving standards of care. She writes often about the `hello, my name is...` campaign--a bid for health workers to stop and introduce themselves to the patients they meet. I bet Kate, and people like her, would love to have some of the time that the rest of us waste.

The journalist Helen Fawkes @helenfawkesUK is another inspirational woman who also happens to have cancer. Her blog, helenfawkes.wordpress.com records how she`s doing with her `bucket list`--her List for Living. `Zooming down a zipwire, and being driven fast,round a racetrack` are there, and give you a taste of the kind of positive, `make the most of every second` woman Helen is.

I can think, without racking my brains too hard, of four people I know who are facing potentially life threatening health issues. They need time, as well as the right care, to get fit again. I could name other, special people, and I bet you could, too, who assumed they`d plod along until their seventies or eighties, but got taken from us suddenly--in an accident or after a swift, savage illness that no one could have predicted.

I don`t have any answers. I can`t promise that I`ll while away the `waiting` hours writing something worthwhile, baking for a charity event or knitting squares for freezing knees. But I`ll think of something useful. I do know that time is precious. But sometimes, you need to meet someone who`s seriously short of the stuff, to remind you of that.