The damp patch

A shopkeeper in Shubra answers his phone on the first ring, every time. A supplier, a cousin, a customer asking whether he has a size in stock. He is proud of how quickly he responds.

Behind him, on the storeroom wall, there is a damp patch. It was the size of a coin in the spring. It is now the size of a door, and the boxes stacked against it have started to soften.

Lay out everything waiting for him and it falls along a line of time. The call that is ringing now. The supplier's invoice due at the end of the month. The lease that comes up for renewal next year. The roof that will need real work within five. The son who will want to go to university in eight.

Any one of these could be looked at this afternoon. The phone feels urgent because it is loud. The patch feels unimportant because it is quiet. Neither of those feelings is a fact about the problem.

Things that are small and far away are cheap to deal with. A plasterer in the spring would have taken an hour. A builder now will take a week and some of the stock with it.

A ringtone exists to make us move. So were the red dots on every screen and the buzz in a pocket. They are very good at deciding what feels urgent.

But they do not get to decide what is important. That decision belongs to him. He can let the phone ring twice, walk to the back of the shop and look at the wall.