The To-Do List (2 page)

       
‘Do you think we’ve done the right thing having another baby?’ Claire mused.

       
‘Yeah, of course,’ I replied confidently even though I wasn’t sure at all. ‘Everything will be fine.’

       
‘I know it will,’ said Claire rubbing her tummy fondly. ‘But . . . I don’t know . . . before I got pregnant again I felt like we were on the home straight. We knew what we were doing. We had it all sorted out and were having so much fun. But now, well, I’ll be a “mother of two”. You’ll be a “father of two”. This baby’s going to turn us into proper grown-ups.’

       
Later that morning, when we’d both calmed down a bit, eaten breakfast and showered, I found myself thinking about what Claire had said. There really was no turning back. In a few weeks we would be responsible not just for one small life but two and that prospect suddenly seemed scary.

       
But at the age of thirty-five and thirty-three respectively weren’t we already ‘proper adults’? Technically I suppose we were. My thirty-sixth birthday was less than twenty-four hours away, I was already a father of one, a ‘propelling-you-into-adulthood’ responsibility in itself; yes, like most of my fellow thirtysomethings I was being slowly crushed by the weight of a hefty mortgage. But other than that (and enjoying playing Scrabble and finding property programmes ‘relaxing’) I was pure kid. I mean, would a so-called ‘proper adult’ spill milk under the fridge and let it sit there for weeks? Would a ‘proper adult’ take the best part of
three years
to post a solitary Christmas card to a close friend? Would a ‘proper adult’ have underwear in active service that was well over a decade old?

       
So there I was: neither flesh nor fowl; neither Big John nor Little John; neither man nor boy. Instead I was stuck between two camps – able to laugh at jokes about breaking wind and yet eligible for Big Boys’ prison should I ever find that I’ve committed murder.

       
That evening, as we tidied our bedroom having just put Lydia to bed, I turned to Claire. ‘Do you know what I think the problem is?’

       
‘The problem with what?’

       
‘With us. I think the problem with us is that we’re scared to commit.’

       
‘To what?’

       
‘To the idea of full adulthood.’

       
‘Rubbish,’ replied Claire. ‘Of course we’re not. Whatever gave you that idea?’

       
I led Claire to the full-sized mirror in the corner of the room and pointed. ‘That’s what gave me the idea,’ I said pointing at our reflections. ‘Look at us! What do you see?’

       
Claire peered hard in the mirror. ‘I see you and me.’

       
‘Exactly! You see “me and you”. Now answer this: do you think that Derek and Jessica look like this?’ I jabbed a finger in the direction of the T-shirt that I and my reflection were wearing. ‘Do you think that right now Derek is wearing a T-shirt depicting Sid James riding on a BMX?’

       
Claire began picking at a white blob of something just above my right nipple. ‘Even if he was I don’t think he’d have toothpaste encrusted onto it. How do you do that by the way? How do you get toothpaste over every single item of clothing that you wear?’

       
‘The toothpaste isn’t the point,’ I replied impatiently. ‘The point, babe, is us. We’re a mess. I mean do you really think that Jessica is wearing a pair of comedy tiger-claw slippers?’

       
‘But I like my slippers,’ said Claire indignantly, looking down at her feet, ‘they’re comfortable!’

       
‘I know that. You’re preaching to the choir here. But you have to admit that they’re just not very Derek and Jessica are they?’

       
Derek and Jessica were our new next-door neighbours as of approximately six weeks ago. Our previous next-door neighbours, Tony and Jane, a pair of grumpy but nonetheless amusing middle-aged comprehensive school teachers, had moved to Bath to open a B&B and despite our jovial request to sell their home to someone ‘fun’ had opted for the highest bidders. Financial consultant Derek and his wife, marketing consultant Jessica, in their mid-thirties, were it.

       
It wasn’t just that they turned up in top-of-the-range executive cars, or that pretty much every Saturday night since they’d moved in they would throw dinner parties for which a stream of glamorous-looking friends would arrive clutching expensive bottles of wine while Claire and I lay slumped in a post-chicken-dhansak-induced coma in front of
X-Factor
. It wasn’t even that they too had a three-year-old child with another baby on the way, and yet possessed a home that was permanently immaculate. No, what really depressed me was that both Derek and Jessica were unmistakably ‘proper grown-ups’. I couldn’t imagine either of them taking three years to post a Christmas card, owning underwear over a decade old and as for leaving spilt milk under the fridge, I was pretty sure Jessica would have a heart attack at the very thought.

       
‘We need to be more like them,’ I said as I gazed gloomily at our reflections. ‘We need to start acting like proper grown-ups and doing grown-up things instead of carrying on like teenagers waiting to be found out.’

       
‘Great,’ said Claire succinctly. ‘Maybe you can begin your journey into adulthood with a bout of kitchen cleaning because that milk you spilt under the fridge is really starting to honk.’

       
At the end of the night, as I put our takeaway cartons into the kitchen bin and tried not to gag at the smell wafting up from underneath the fridge, I resolved that this was it: make or break time. The eve of my thirty-sixth birthday was when I was finally going to have to decide whether I was a man or just a boy in long trousers.

       
‘Are you coming up to bed?’ Claire put her arms around me.

       
‘Not yet,’ I replied, patting her tummy. ‘I’ve got a few things to do.’

       
‘Like what?’

       
‘Nothing much, just a few things.’

       
As Claire headed up to the bathroom to get ready for bed I made my way into the living room, picked up an old diary that Lydia had been doodling on and one of her felt-tip pens and made my way to the loft. After sweeping a pile of discarded newspapers and sweet wrappers onto the floor, I settled myself at my desk and in large capital letters wrote the words that would change my life: ‘TO-DO LIST.’

It was sometime later and I was still feverishly working away when Claire popped her head around the door.

       
‘What are you doing?’

       
‘I’m writing a list.’

       
‘At three o’clock in the morning?’

       
I looked at my watch. It was indeed three o’clock in the morning.

       
‘I didn’t realise,’ I replied. ‘That said, it
is
a pretty important list.’

       
‘What kind of list can be that important?’

       
‘It’s a To-Do list.’

       
Sighing, she entered the room and sat on the edge of the spare bed, rubbed her eyes and ran a hand through her hair which was flying off in all directions as though trying to make a break from her head. Clearly confused by the sight of me sitting at my desk in my pants and an old band T-shirt frantically scribbling on a notepad she assumed a pained expression and focused her full attention on me.

       
‘A To-Do List?’ she prompted.

       
‘Yeah, you know, because I’ve got a lot of stuff
to do
.’

       
My wife’s eyebrows began to knit together in a mask of disbelief and confusion. My explanation obviously hadn’t explained why her husband of nearly ten years was up at three in the morning on his thirty-sixth birthday making . . . of all things . . . a To-Do list.

       
‘I don’t understand.’ She rubbed the underside of her belly in the manner an old gypsy lady might use to polish her crystal ball. ‘Exactly what stuff is it that you’ve got to do? And when have you got to do it?’

       
I looked down at my notepad. When Claire had entered the room I’d just finished Item number 253: ‘Get old baby clothes out of the cupboard in loft’ and was in the middle of Item number 254: ‘Have a go at growing a beard’.

       
I knew she would be pleased that I was giving considered thought to the arrival of the new baby, but when it came to the idea of my cultivating facial hair, I was on less certain ground.

       
‘It’s just stuff.’ I sounded sulky. ‘Not interesting stuff. Just stuff.’

       
‘Right. Well much as I’d love to sit here talking to you all night about “stuff ”, I’m badly in need of sleep. I only got up because I needed a wee – this baby is pressing down on my bladder something rotten – and now I need another one so I’ll leave you to your list making.’

       
‘Cheers, babe.’ I got up from my desk, walked over and put my arms around her.

       
‘Look, I won’t be long. Ten, maybe fifteen minutes tops and then I’ll be back in bed.’

       
‘Fine, but no more than that, okay?’

       
‘Scout’s honour.’

       
It was two and a half hours and an extra two hundred or so items on the List later, not to mention having taken Lord Baden-Powell’s name in vain, that I finally slunk back into bed without rousing my wife. I was exhausted. Shattered. Good for absolutely nothing other than sleep. But also elated. And alive. And excited. Because for the first time in a long while I felt as though I’d got a bit of direction in my life. As though I’d got a plan.

Chapter 2: ‘Do something about the aforementioned problem.’

Waking up just after nine on the day of my birthday I was struck by how much energy I felt I had despite getting far less than my preferred seven hours sleep. As I pondered why this was, I heard my daughter scrambling up the stairs and within a few moments she’d appeared in the room, carrying a pen and pad of paper.

       
‘Because it’s your birthday Mummy said I can be a waitress and take your breakfast order,’ she explained in her best ‘proper’ voice. ‘What would you like to eat, sir?’

       
‘What’s on the menu?’

       
She looked down at the pad. ‘Eggs.’

       
‘What kind of eggs?’

       
She shrugged. ‘Just eggs.’

       
Opting for ‘just eggs’ and ‘just orange juice’ I got a big kiss on the lips from my waitress, who wished me a happy birthday and left the room.

       
Half an hour later, I’d polished off my breakfast, opened my presents and listened to Lydia singing her best rendition
of Happy Birthday
, and was bouncing up and down on the bed with Lydia in time to music coming out of the i-Pod. It was weird. I’d gone to bed very late indeed and by rights should be completely shattered yet the tiredness didn’t seem to want to come. I felt good about life. In fact I felt
great
about life. It wasn’t just about it being my birthday. It wasn’t that I’d had a rare lie-in combined with breakfast in bed. In mid-bounce, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Lydia’s old doodling book and remembered the reason for my new-found energy.

       
I picked up the notebook and scanned the last few entries: ‘409: Take all unwanted books to Oxfam because you’ve got too many’; ‘410: Get magazine subscription for
Vanity Fair
because it has long articles and it’s not just about music’; ‘411: Start reading
Private Eye
again so you can work at being both humorous and topical’; ‘412: Give blood because you know it makes sense’; ‘413: Try wearing hats more often because you look good in them’.

       
It was odd reading these messages from my late-night self. What had possessed me to spend from eleven at night through to five thirty in the morning writing a To-Do List? I was reminded of the scene from
Memento
where Guy Pearce’s amnesiac character notices that his body is covered in tattoos reminding him of things he needs to know. This notebook was my version of Guy Pearce’s tattooed body. And oddly enough it was the reason that I was feeling happy.

The truth of the matter was that I’d always loved To-Do Lists. Always. I’m pretty sure that the second thing I did after learning to scrawl my name was to write a list of things I wanted to achieve. It probably went along the lines of:

1. Learn to read.

2. Take a nap.

3. Watch
Rainbow
.

4. Play with toys.

And though I might not have learned to read before I’d taken a nap or indeed watched
Rainbow
before playing with my toys, the very act of taking a pencil and paper and writing these things down one after the other gave me an immense amount of pleasure.

       
To me a list is a statement of intent, a plan, a map to point you in the right direction. Without my To-Do Lists I’d be lost. Without my To-Do Lists I would just be making stuff up as I went along and that, as far as I’m concerned, is no way to live a life.

       
My early To-Do Lists tended to be lists of books that I wanted to read, and each time I read one I got a tick. Now, while the writing of a list can be a reward in itself, as any veteran To-Do Lister will attest, the real pay-off is the satisfaction that comes from ticking, crossing, or scribbling an item off your list. With one neat action a task that has been bugging you for the longest time is utterly obliterated.
Pow!
It’s gone. Nothing beats a hard-won tick off the list.