The To-Do List (15 page)

Excerpt from Mike’s To-Do-List Diary (Part 3)

Thursday 1 March

8.55 a.m.
The good news: I’ve just set in motion the first part of Item 408: ‘Go and see a doctor about the knee you injured playing football three years ago.’ I have made an appointment for 5.00 p.m. tomorrow! The bad news: my childhood is still riding around in the back of the car.

2.55 p.m.
I am in a plane on my way to Glasgow for an event that my publishers are throwing to promote various books to the trade. I had planned to watch the rest of
The Wire
on my computer as part of Item 813: ‘Finish off the rest of Season One of
The Wire
’ but as soon as I get on the plane I fall asleep instead. I suspect all this extra activity is beginning to take its toll.

Friday 2 March

19.55 p.m.
I am back from Glasgow having managed to watch roughly ten minutes of the second episode of
The Wire
before falling asleep. Now it is Friday night and the kids are asleep, so Claire and I are letting our hair down and tackling Items 978–983: ‘Drink up all the old duty-free spirits that you’ve bought over the years because you hate to miss a bargain’. In fact, while Claire only drinks wine and I prefer lager, none of our family or friends drinks spirits at all. Despite this we still have:

1 bottle of Peach Schnapps (Innsbruck Airport, Austria)

2 bottles of Dream Island Cocktail mix (Seychelles International Airport)

1 bottle of Mount Gay rum (Grantley Adams International Airport, Barbados)

1 bottle of Ouzo (Larnaca Airport, Cyprus)

1 bottle of Tequila (Mexico City International Airport)

1 bottle of Banana liqueur (Birmingham International Airport)

8.00 p.m.
Claire and I have our first drink of the evening: two shots of ouzo each. It tastes just as vile now as it did when we first tried it on holiday in Cyprus five years ago. Age has not mellowed this drink at all. Why we bought it I’ll never know.

8.05 p.m.
Claire and I are making cocktails with the Dream Island Cocktail mix and some leftover lemonade. It tastes ace. ‘This is like melted ice cream with a kick,’ says Claire. ‘We should’ve started drinking this a lot earlier.’

8.20 p.m.
Three drinks in and we are on the peach schnapps. With lemonade. It tastes so sweet that I fear my teeth falling out and the immediate onset of type two diabetes.

9.33 p.m.
Claire has opted out of the evening’s experiment on the grounds that at least one of us should be legally sober should one of the kids wake up. Emboldened by flying solo I am mixing my drinks big time. In front of me is a highball glass filled with ouzo, Dream Island Cocktail mix, Banana liqueur, rum, the last bit of the lemonade and a fistful of ice. I’ve dubbed it the Dirty Duty. It looks slightly radioactive. Claire asks me if I think that Derek and Jessica would ever drink a Dirty Duty. I tell her they would if it came in a fancy glass and cost £16.00 a go.

10.31 p.m.
I have had to stop drinking. My stomach is churning like a washing machine on spin cycle. I ask Claire if it might have been something I ate. She just raises her eyebrows and sighs.

Saturday 3 March

2.23 a.m.
I am being sick.

2.53 a.m.
I am being even more sick.

3.02 a.m.
I am being sick again even though there is nothing left to throw up other than my kidneys.

Sunday 4 March

7.00 a.m.
Claire is letting me have a lie-in as I still feel a bit fragile after my efforts on Friday night. With so much alcohol left over even after my valiant attempts with the Dirty Duty, I have decided to put this particular tick on pause and move on to something more edifying. Item 345 is: ‘Have a go at those learn-to-speak-Italian CDs’. I’d bought the CDs five years ago when Claire and I were planning a holiday to the Italian Lakes but had never even opened them. Every couple of years Claire would threaten to take them to Oxfam. Wresting them from her grip I would swear that one day I would indeed learn Italian and then she would end up
ridere
on the other side of her
faccia
.

7.23 a.m.
After spending the best part of twenty minutes turning my office upside down I eventually locate the CDs underneath a pile of old newspapers. I eagerly tear the Cellophane off, look at the CDs and read the labels. Each one lasts seventy minutes. One hundred and forty minutes is quite a long time to spend trying to learn another language. I imagine myself sitting in front of my computer practising Italian. One hundred and forty minutes is definitely too long. Perhaps, given that it’s a Sunday and that I’ve been quite ill, I should try one CD to start with.

Monday 5 March

4.33 p.m.
‘
A che ora e servita la colazione
?’ says the voice on the CD. ‘Arrh key ohr-ahur eee sehr-vee-taher lah koh-laht-zee-oh-nehay,’ I repeat, putting my heart into making my version of ‘What time is breakfast?’ sound authentically Italian. Sadly, I’m about as close to sounding authentically Italian as Peter Sellers’ Inspector Clouseau is authentically French. My irreducible Brummie inflections and terrible grasp of pronunciation are not so much mangling this beautiful language as battering it to death with a sledgehammer and then running it over several times with a 4×4.

Tuesday 6 March

4.48 p.m.
Having opted to put learning Italian on hold I’m trying to decide whether to tackle Item 412: ‘Become a blood donor’, or Item 328: ‘Speak to a financial advisor about investing for the future so that you don’t have to spend your dotage in penury’, when I remember that I’m supposed to be at my local GP’s surgery showing them my knee.

5.10 p.m.
I am trying to explain to my doctor why I have waited until now to bring a three-year-old injury to the attention of a medical professional. ‘It was always on my To Do List but I could never find the time,’ I explain. He seems unimpressed. ‘By waiting this long you’ve probably made the situation a lot worse.’ He writes a letter of referral to a clinic for some physiotherapy.

Wednesday 7 March

9.55 a.m.
I’m looking at the car boot filled with my childhood and wondering how I’m to transport the pram and travel cot in my hands over to my parents’ house so they can look after Maisie for a couple of hours. Claire says I should just bite the bullet and bin all the childhood stuff. I know she is right but I am still conflicted.

Chapter 13: ‘Now you’re well into your thirties start taking your health seriously.’

When people feel pain in their sinuses they think, ‘Oh, I’ve got sinusitis.’ When people get an unexplained spot on their hand they think, ‘I’m sure it’s nothing.’ And when people start coughing and spluttering they think, ‘I’m coming down with a bad cold, I’ll get some Lemsip.’ But when these things happen to me I don’t think like other people. I think like me. Hence sinusitis becomes a potential brain tumour, a spot is the beginning of necrotising fasciitis disease and seasonal coughing and spluttering is down to a local park encounter with a dodgy-looking mallard – before you can say ‘avian bird flu’ I’m Googling the nearest supplier of Tamiflu. This pretty much tells you all you need to know about why Item 772: ‘Make a decision about private health care’, made it on to the To-Do List. But there was a second reason.

       
The week before I began writing the To-Do List, mail belonging to my arch nemesis and next-door neighbour, Derek, had mistakenly been delivered to us and among it was a BUPA renewal form. At the time I thought, ‘Typical! He’s so grown up that he’s even doing stuff to make him live longer!’ and I determined that looking after my health would be something that I did too.

       
Uninterested in joining BUPA I opted instead to find a way of getting a complete health check that would allay my burgeoning hypochondria. Typing ‘Body MOT’ and ‘Birmingham’ into Google led within a few short minutes to my credit-card details and an online booking form to secure the next available appointment for the Health First Institute’s Silver grade ‘Health and Wellness Examination’. The gold was too pricey and involved needlessly scary MRI scans. Verily I was about to join the ranks of the media phenomenon known as ‘the worried well’.

On the morning of my examination I felt distinctly agitated. So far, much that I’d attempted on my list had been frustrating, wearisome or even plain boring, but at least never life threatening. As I was forever pointing out to anyone who asked, the List wasn’t a ‘parachute out of a plane’ kind of affair and I certainly wasn’t a ‘parachuting out of a plane’ kind of guy. Life-threatening activities just weren’t me. In fact I was the polar opposite of an adrenaline junkie. My stimulant of choice was Ovaltine. Therefore if there were any life-threatening activities to be had I preferred to experience them third hand, ideally within the pages of a good book or on a TV screen. But this was different. I was voluntarily pushing myself to the very outer edges of my comfort zone by submitting to an unwarranted medical examination that could result in me discovering I’VE ONLY GOT SIX MONTHS TO LIVE.

       
‘But wouldn’t you want to know if you’d only got six months to live?’ asked Claire as I explained my fears.

       
I looked at her as though she were mad. ‘Of course not.’

       
‘Why not?’

       
‘Because when you’re a man, ignorance isn’t just bliss. It’s also the stuff that keeps the walls from falling down.’

       
‘I’m sure you’ll be fine,’ said Claire kissing me on the cheek and handing me a plastic bag.

       
‘What’s this?’

       
‘Something to eat after the examination because, in case you’ve forgotten, you can’t eat anything until after your blood test.’

       
My heart sank. I’d been really looking forward to breakfast and now even that small delight had been snatched from me.

       
‘I might as well go,’ I sighed. ‘Maybe if I get there earlier they’ll see me earlier which will mean that I’ll get to eat a bit earlier too!’

From the outside, the Health First Institute had something of the air of an upmarket dental surgery, with its frosted window and official-looking logo of an eagle perching on an outstretched hand. Buzzed in through the large black front door I entered a reception/waiting room where the dentist theme continued with pale cream walls, framed arty prints and comfortable seating.

       
The receptionist smiled warmly and took my name and credit card details in case I died during the examination. I sat down and waited to be collected.

       
In her uniform Tracy resembled a small child playing dress-up rather than a fully qualified medical professional. Were private medical care centres governed by the same rules as public ones? Did the nurses have to have training or would anybody do? I needn’t have worried. In a quiet yet forceful tone she demanded that I provide her with a ‘mid stream urine sample’. You don’t get much more professional than that.

       
I took the container into the loo but wasn’t one hundred per cent sure what she meant. Common sense suggested she was referring to the bit that was not the beginning or the end but not knowing how full my bladder was might make it difficult to tell. I opted to leave a couple of seconds before starting my collection and then, displaying hitherto undreamt-of skills in bladder control, provided intermittent blasts of what I hoped to be quality stuff.

       
Next Tracy introduced me to nurse practitioner Alison who would be conducting my initial examination.

       
‘Right,’ she began. ‘I’m going to take a few measurements, collect a few samples, conduct a few tests and then once we’re done I’ll take you upstairs for something to eat before your consultation with Dr Anwar. He’ll take you through the results of your examination.’ She paused. ‘How does that sound?’

       
‘Great.’ What else to say?

       
Alison measured my weight and height then got out a device that she informed me was a more accurate way of measuring my body mass index. A cursory glance at the chart showed that my body and I were quite clearly in the ‘need-to-lose-some-weight zone’, although this news was somewhat tempered by the fact that I had a relatively high muscle ratio. It was all I could do not to punch the air and whoop like a game-show contestant. I might be overweight but I was officially deemed muscularly well endowed.

       
With the tests over, Alison pointed me in the direction of the upstairs waiting room and said Dr Anwar would come and collect me when he was ready. The upstairs waiting room was nothing like an upmarket dental surgery; it was more like an upmarket snack bar. There wasn’t just one kind of breakfast moment on offer on the counter that spanned an entire wall, there were dozens of items: fruit, mineral water, cereal, muesli, pastries, croissants, milk, tea, coffee, fruit juice and all free! I was more than a bit peckish and tempted to have a go at pretty much all of it. But mindful of where I was and what for, I restrained myself and selected a cereal bar. No sooner had I taken the wrapper off and jammed the whole thing into my mouth when a tall man in a white coat entered the room.

       
‘Mr Michael Gayle?’

       
I nodded, frantically trying to swallow my cereal bar.