What does waiting mean to you? We wait constantly, right now for the new year, for the pandemic to end, for that job we have been optioned for to be confirmed, for relationships to end, for relationships to be rekindled, for the passport we have applied for to be issued without delays, for the PCR test we took and posted to the lab to be delivered on time, for the train to arrive at destination , for the end of travel restrictions etc. etc. Life begins in earnest the moment we are born and then it proceeds in one direction only, a series of present moments soon turning into past and leading into the future, always unknown and unpredictable, till we finally die. Our lives, long or short though they may be, are filled with activities, encounters, movement, always propelled forward, but also punctuated with endless waiting, till that moment of reckoning, when death comes. I always imagine death to be as it appears in The Seventh Seal, a stern gentleman who plays chess and comes to