The To-Do List (3 page)

       
Soon after reaching secondary school in the early eighties, I came to realise that the making of To-Do Lists wasn’t just an idle pastime but rather a means of survival, the significance of which I learned the hard way.

       
Set the arduous homework task by the Biology teacher, Mr Mason, of drawing margins on every single page of my exercise book, I decided that I would save time and effort by simply adding it to the To-Do List inside my head. At the time my mental To-Do List was populated by things like:

1. Learn how to dance like Michael Jackson.

2. Watch
Grange Hill
.

3. Read the
Lord of The Rings
trilogy.

4. Decide whether you’re too old to still be playing with
Star Wars
figures.

5. Persuade parents to buy a video recorder.

I should have known that I was on a hiding to nothing. But it was only when the next Biology lesson came along and Mr Mason asked us to present our homework for inspection that I realised my mistake. My punishment was to write a five-hundred-word essay during lunch break entitled ‘My favourite animal’. As punishments aimed at twelve-year-old boys go, it wasn’t that bad but it was enough to demonstrate conclusively that when it came to keeping track of things you need to do, there is no better invention than an actual, written-down-on paper, To-Do List.

       
Years later, having ticked off items like ‘get a girlfriend’, ‘get a degree’, ‘get a girlfriend who’s in a band’, ‘get a job as a journalist’, ‘get married and buy a house’ and ‘write novel’, all by the time I was thirty, I smugly thought I was doing pretty well with the whole To-Do-List thing. Of course there were a few items along the way that never got ticked off such as ‘write music reviews for the
NME
’, ‘write a sitcom’, and ‘Go out with Kylie Minogue’ but on the whole tickwise I thought I was doing okay. In fact, I thought I was doing so okay that there really was only one more thing left on my life list, and that was ‘Have a baby’. And while ticking that one off was a lot less straightforward than I hoped it would be, once it happened in the spring of 2003, and Lydia was born, I felt ready to retire from the world of To-Do Lists. After all, I reasoned, what else is there? What I failed to realise of course was the first undeniable truth of To-Do Lists: ‘Unless you’re dead there’s always going to be stuff that needs doing.’

       
As Claire and I got on with the business of raising our daughter, I took my eye off the To-Do-List ball, so to speak. After six years without a To-Do List to my name, a three-and-a-half-year-old daughter in the mix, another child on the way and a whole lot of stuff that I’d been putting on ‘the back burner’, there was no doubt that I’d probably stored up enough ‘trouble’ to last me an entire life time.

Returning to my breakfast leftovers I managed a few mouthfuls of toast before I found myself reaching for the list and writing in purple wax crayon (the only writing implement to hand): ‘414: Put pens in every room because I’m sick and tired of not being able to find anything to write with’; followed by ‘415: Tidy Lydia’s crayons away before they all end up getting walked into the carpet’, before scribbling a completely random ‘416: Overcome prison phobia so that you don’t have to keep coming up with excuses for why you’re not watching
Prison Break
like everyone else’.

       
I was fine for a while after that. In fact I’d had a shower and was almost dressed before succumbing to the urge to add items such as: ‘Have a facial’: ‘Sample all the milks’; ‘Be someone’s mentor’; ‘Text Richard’; ‘See Darren and Emma’, and ‘Replace broken remote control’. I re-examined what I’d written and was confused. I understood why I wanted a facial (because I’d never had one and well, why not?) but where would I get one done and how would I avoid feeling like an idiot while receiving it? What exactly did I mean by sample all the milks? I’d done pasteurised, semi-skimmed, skimmed and gold top but I’d never tried Guernsey, goat or soya. But when I said ‘all the milks’ did that include camel, donkey, yak, water buffalo, reindeer, thistle, and . . . breast? And whose mentor was I going to be? What would it involve me doing? Would I have to put an advert in the paper? Would they know I was mentoring them or would I mentor by stealth? Texting my friend Richard sounded easy, but would it really be that straightforward given that I hadn’t worked out how to send or receive text messages since getting my new phone? I had found it hard enough to see Emma and Darren when they lived in Manchester so what was I going to do now they were in New Zealand? Finally, where on earth was I going to find a replacement remote control for my TV?

       
Problems. Problems. Problems. It was tempting to give up before I’d begun and yet despite the many obstacles to completing my ever-growing list I couldn’t seem to stop adding to it. I added to it in the tapas restaurant that Claire took me to for my birthday lunch; I pulled over and added to it in the car on the way home from the park; I added to it as I prepared Lydia a tea-time snack and I carried on adding to it for what was left of the rest of the day. The following morning I added to it as soon as I woke up (admittedly less able to dance on the bed); I added to it when I was supposed to be getting on with work, and I added to it when I was supposed to be spending ‘quality time’ with Claire. In fact I added to it for more than six and a half days. Then I wrote Item 1398: ‘Ride on world’s fastest rollercoaster,’ stopped, and felt very strange indeed.

PART TWO

Early November

(During which I try and work out what to do next with my to-do list and come up with a plan)

Chapter 3: ‘Speak to a Canadian (they are nice).’

What exactly was I going to do next, now that I had this ludicrously long list? Perhaps the best thing was to put it in a drawer and forget about it. After all, it wasn’t as though I was going to do all this stuff, was it? It was hard enough doing the essentials let alone actively seeking out stuff that – while it might improve my quality of life – wasn’t exactly urgent. I mean, was it urgent to buy a few shirts that actually fitted? Couldn’t I just carry on with the ones that were two sizes too small? And while I did appreciate that my parents wouldn’t always be around, was there a desperate need to tell Mum and Dad that I loved them right this very second? Couldn’t I just carry on giving them the thumbs-up sign whenever I nipped round to theirs? Yes, it would be great to play my bass guitar like Flea from the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, but given that it had been at least fifteen years since I’d bought it and no longer harboured the desire to appear on
Top of The Pops
, shouldn’t I just let the whole thing lie?

       
The drawer was definitely the best place for the List so I stuck it in the one by the back door which was always overflowing with takeaway menus (Item 498: ‘Empty drawer by back door of takeaway menus and bits of old junk’) and told myself to forget about it until I could see a way forward that made some kind of sense.

       
I didn’t have to wait too long. A few days later, when I least expected it, the way forward presented itself from a most unlikely source: Claire’s friend, Alexa.

       
Alexa is Canadian. I mention this because as far as I can work out, being Canadian is a pretty good thing and the more I learn about my wife’s friend (and about Canadians in general) the more I wonder why they aren’t running the world. Canadians appear to be not only incredibly sensible but also really nice. Trust me, every home should have one.

       
Anyway, along with being Canadian, being a wife and mum to two kids and something of a master baker, Alexa also occasionally helps me out with some general administration. By which I mean pretty much everything work related that isn’t to do with the actual writing of books: filing the important papers I’d neglected to put away; replying to letters that I hadn’t answered; paying the bills I’d long been ignoring; and doing magical things with the huge plastic carrier bags of receipts that sat unlogged on the floor of my office, all so I could get on with the incredibly taxing business of being creative.

       
Anyway, what with the summer holidays, her having the kids at home to look after and my lax attitude to deadlines, it had been quite a while since Alexa had been over to help out. After receiving a particularly alarming demand from my accountant, telling me that I needed to email him some figures or risk handing over my family and home to the Inland Revenue, the first thing I did was set Alexa on the case.

       
‘So what is it that you’re working on?’ she asked as I typed away on the computer.

       
‘Looking up trips to Antarctica on the internet.’

       
‘Any particular reason?’

       
‘It’s on my To-Do List, which I’m supposed to be ignoring at the moment but finding hard to let go,’ I confided.

       
‘Ah,’ said Alexa knowingly, ‘the To-Do List! Claire told me you’re going through something of a mid-life crisis.’

       
‘It’s not a mid-life crisis,’ I objected. ‘It’s me making a decision to become a fully fledged adult by finally sorting my stuff out.’

       
‘And going to Antarctica is on there because  . . .?’

       
‘It’s Antarctica.’

       
‘Do you think that’s a good enough reason?’

       
‘Who wouldn’t want to go to Antarctica?’

       
‘Well, me for one.’ She perched on the edge of my desk. ‘I mean come on, Mike, you’re a guy who likes his creature comforts. You can’t tell me that you’d be happy in Antarctica?’

       
She made a good point. I do like my creature comforts and in order to go to Antarctica I’d have to fly to Buenos Aires in February, make my way to some remote town at the bottom of the country, then meet the boat and share a cabin with a total stranger for upwards of the three weeks (weather dependent) that it would take to get there. All of which, I strongly suspected, would feature a distinct lack of creature comforts.

       
‘Now you put it like that I suppose the answer is no. And while I’m thinking about it, I’m pretty sure that I don’t want to have a ride on the world’s fastest rollercoaster . . . fly to Las Vegas and gamble everything I own on one single roll of a dice . . . go bungee jumping . . . or pet a dolphin . . . or drive a Ferrari at top speed . . . or even buy a pet monkey.’

       
‘You really thought of buying a monkey?’

       
‘Not a big one. Probably a chimp of some kind. Though I’m guessing even the small ones are quite messy.’

       
‘So if you don’t really want to do these things,’ Alexa fixed me with a bemused grin, ‘why are they on your To-Do List?’

       
‘Aren’t these the kinds of things that we’re all supposed to want to do?’

       
Alexa shook her head. ‘They’re not on my list and I’m pretty sure they shouldn’t be on yours either. Can I be honest with you? When Claire first told me what you were doing I thought, “Here we go, yet another guy trying to regain his youth by going on lots of
Boys Own
adventures”; then she told me how normal and everyday some of the things on your list were and I found myself thinking, “Good on you, Mike.” I could get behind this. It’s the kind of thing I would love to do. I can understand wanting to get things done, things that
need
to be done rather than stuff you just quite like the look of.’ She paused and smiled. ‘I do think you ought to do this list, but I don’t think you should spoil it by getting too self-indulgent.’

       
‘So you think the Antarctic stuff should go?’

       
She nodded.

       
‘And the stuff about wanting to touch a fake breast?’

       
She rolled her eyes exactly like Claire does.

       
‘And the monkey?’

       
‘I think you know the answer to that one, Mike. Just keep it real.’

After Alexa had gone home, I headed downstairs, took the List out of the takeaway drawer and started checking through the entries. While most of the early items were okay, somewhere around the late eight hundreds an increasing number of ‘less real’ items had sprung up and continued to do so with alarming regularity, reaching a climax with the last hundred or so entries which wouldn’t get me a single step closer to my goal of being a ‘proper grown up’. So I set about scratching off every item that failed to reach my new standard of ‘keeping it real’. In a bid to separate hardcore items from the kind of everyday stuff which I would probably get round to doing eventually anyway, I struck off anything that hadn’t spent a good six months or so hanging around in To-Do-List purgatory. By the end of the day, although I was some 121 items poorer, I was in fact all the richer for having a list that now positively gleamed with an integrity of which Alexa and her fellow countrymen would be proud. I could feel it, I was nearly there. Now all I needed to do was to test out the plan slowly forming in my mind to make sure that it didn’t have too many holes in it. Who better to test my theory on than the Sunday Night Pub Club?