Your partner is not an excuse. The same way I wont accept "I was drunk" as an excuse for bad behaviour, I refuse to accept "My partner made me late" as a valid excuse for being late.

Punctuality lately seems to be something you should be grateful for, rather than a fair expectation of good behaviour and decent etiquette. I almost wonder why I bother to set a time to meet with people anymore, as "meet at 8 o'clock" seems to mean "meet whenever you feel like after 8 o'clock".

The reason lack of punctuality is rude, the reasons it's highly insulting, is that you're telling the person you are about to meet that they are unimportant, that they are not worth consideration, and that their time is less important than your time.

When I am due to meet someone at say, 8 o'clock at say Piccadilly Circus I go into reverse planning mode. So Piccadilly to Waterloo is 15 mins, 5 mins waiting for a tube, 5 mins getting to the tube, 15 mins train, 5 mins waiting for the train, 5 mins getting to the train. I then know I need to leave my flat at a minimum 50 mins before 8. Mentally I'll bank on being ready some time around just under an hour before. As I get closer to needing to get ready I'll look up train times. I see their is a train at 19:15 and 19:08. I'll then leave my flat to make the 19:08, so I have a contingency of the next train should I for some reason miss the first train.

Tap Excuse.
Backstop.

I have no idea if these mean anything to anyone. I have no idea if they are real things from my youth either, or I just think they are.

Tap Excuse: I remember from being about 12 or 13 (Barmitzvah age) and going to school discos and dances for the first time. These days I know the kids are having screaming weasel sex at the age, but in my day we went to discos and shyly attempted to dance badly with girls (so not much has changed then). Anyway I remember some guy telling me about tap excuse. At these discos if you wanted to dance with a girl, and someone was already dancing with the girl, all you had to do was tap them on the sholder and say excuse me. Then the other guy had to let you dance with the girl. That was just the way it was. Upon reflection this was told to me when guys wanted to dance with the girl I was entirely possible I was being had.

Backstop: You know when you are in a bar and accidentally knock someone's drink and they get up about to slam your face into their boot. Just before they do, if a bunch of guys get up and stand behind your back to suggest that he should stop lest he find himself tackling all your friends too. That's backstop. Backstop is the collective noun for a group of friends that 'have your back' in a fight.

Saturday night reminded me of both of these