The To-Do List (32 page)

       
‘It’s brilliant,’ agreed Claire. ‘But they’re still way more grown up than we are. Did you notice Jessica’s make up? I can tell you for nothing that wasn’t Superdrugs own brand and as for all that stuff about it being so hard to find “a decent villa in Antibes to rent” at this time of year, I can guarantee that neither of them has ever been anywhere near the Butlins holiday camps I went to when I was a kid.’

       
‘Still, none of that matters. Are we totally on top of everything? Probably not. But could we hold our own in a conversation about the war in Iraq,
Dr Who
, and the early singles of Take That without looking stupid? Yes, we could. And that can mean only one thing: we’ve arrived at the point we always wanted to reach. We are now fully fledged grown-ups.’

Chapter 30: ‘Turn thirty-seven.’

The morning of my thirty-seventh birthday was near enough as good as a birthday morning can get. Following breakfast in bed (a good portion of which was polished off by the kids) I was made to open my presents. I say ‘made’ only because one of the best things about being a dad is getting the title ‘Officially the grumpiest man in the house’, and as such it was my duty to make out like I was completely not bothered by birthdays. The girls were having none of this, which was just as well. It’s hard to be even remotely grumpy when your four-year-old daughter presents you with a painstakingly constructed homemade card in which she has written the legend: ‘To the best daddy in the world.’ You’d have to be in possession of a heart of stone not to be moved by that and given that my heart was made of ordinary flesh and blood I had a bit of a moment. Just as I was beginning to well up, Maisie, for reasons known only to herself, decided to throw up the bottle of milk she’d just polished off, and Claire and I went into wet-wipe-damage-limitation mode in a bid to save our bed from permanent sick penetration.

       
Once the commotion was over I continued with my present opening. Claire had excelled herself in making sure that every single present hit the spot and so as well as classic Gayle-friendly gifts like posh chocolate, jelly beans and those Lindt chocolate things with the melty stuff inside, taking pride of place atop my present mountain was a boxed reissue of the most desired toy of any boy born in the seventies: an Evel Knievel stuntman and bike.

       
‘This is brilliant,’ I gasped. ‘Have you any idea how much I wanted one of these when I was a kid? I practically begged my mum for one every day for a year and I still ended up with a junior microscope!’

       
‘I spotted it in a shop in the Bullring that’s mostly full of tat, but the second I saw it on the shelf next to a box of inflatable sumo wrestling suits I knew straight away that you’d love it. Happy birthday, babe.’ She leaned across the present pile and kissed me. ‘And now the present unwrapping is all out of the way I’m going to make sure that you have the best day ever.’

       
And we did have the best day ever. It was faultless. After breakfast Lydia and I took it in turns to play Evel Knievel. For the uninitiated the Evel Knievel stunt set consists of Evel’s bike, a toy Evel Knievel doll to go on the aforementioned bike and the futuristically monikered Evel Knievel ‘Gyroscope’ that you wind up as fast as you can before furiously launching Evel into whichever death-defying stunts you have laid on for him.

       
Starting out coyly with a few basic jumps utilising the Evel Knievel stunt ramp Lydia and I quickly graduated to increasingly dangerous stunts and culminated in the stunt of stunts (co-created with my daughter): the Evel Knievel Loft Jump. This involved Lydia and I lining up a couple of old shelves that we’d found in the basement, positioning Evel at the bottom of them, opening the window in the loft and then revving the gyroscope so quickly that when Evel made his way up the ramp and out of the window he was little more than a blur. Racing to the window we witnessed first-hand Evel’s rapid descent, and as he crashed through the bush opposite the kitchen window terrifying our neighbour’s tabby into leaping several feet in the air we fell about laughing hysterically. We were unable to stop even when Claire was telling us off and later, at the restaurant over my birthday lunch, all one of us had to do was make a loud ‘Vrooom!’ and do an impression of the cat leaping in the air and we were both off in hysterics once more.

       
‘So was that a good birthday then?’ asked Claire as we stood in the bathroom brushing the kids’ teeth.

       
‘Brilliant,’ I replied. ‘Possibly the best ever. Evel Knievel really was a stroke of genius. It was like being ten again.’

       
‘Good,’ said Claire. ‘Even though it will probably be me rather than you that will have to explain what happened to Oscar when next door complain that he’s suffering from hypertension.’

       
‘He always was a bit nervous. I just pushed him over the edge.’

       
‘With a toy motorcycle.’

       
‘He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

       
Claire rolled her eyes. It was the first time in a while. I had missed her constant exasperation. Getting a good eye roll made me feel that I was doing a decent job of being a husband. ‘How are you feeling about tonight?’

       
‘Okay,’ I lied. All day I’d been having these moments of dread as though my unconscious mind was counting down to the evening’s audit.

       
‘Do you think you’ll pass?’

       
I shrugged. ‘I’m hoping so. Obviously it’s not the end of the world if I don’t but I’ll be disappointed if I’ve failed. I really do want to beat the List, to feel like I took on the impossible and won. Let’s face it, it’s not like I’m ever going to climb Mount Everest or trek to the North Pole, and it’s not like I’d want to either.’

       
‘You hate being cold at the best of times.’

       
‘Too right. But whatever it is that drives those guys or drives Richard Branson to do daft things with balloons . . . well it’s the same thing that makes me want to conquer a 1,277-item-long list of everyday stuff.’

       
‘I think they call it the right stuff,’ said Claire.

       
‘That’s it,’ I replied. ‘All I want to know is that I’m made of the right stuff.’

Upstairs in the loft I sat down at my computer and wrote the following email to my entire address book:

Dear all,

This is a quick message for all of you that have been keeping tabs on my efforts with my 1,277-item To-Do List (and for the very few of you that haven’t) just to let you know that a) It’s my birthday today b) I had a very good day thank you for asking and c) I’m pretty sure that I’ve ticked everything off the list but I’ll find out officially in an hour or so down the pub and once that’s happened the tardy service for which I was previously world renowned will be resumed. Seriously though, it’s all over in a bit so keep your fingers crossed for me that I hit my 99% target rate!

Cheers

Mike x

As I grabbed my coat and keys and kissed Claire goodbye I felt slightly odd. Events had taken on such a life of their own that it was hard to imagine any connection between the version of me that had started scribbling things down in his four-year-old daughter’s notebook and the version that was feeling sick and nervous at the prospect of being audited by his friends. How had this happened? From my position on the doorstep I looked across at Derek and Jessica’s downstairs bay window. Though the curtains were closed a light was on and I could picture them sitting on their posh red velvet sofa, holding a glass of wine and watching TV on their flash-looking flat-screen TV (not just ordinary TV but ‘proper grown-up TV’ like, I don’t know,
The South Bank Show
or a Channel Four documentary about Rwanda). This was what had started it off . . . not exactly keeping up with the Joneses but trying to
be
more like the Joneses. Had I achieved that? Did I project an air of maturity to the people I met? That was one of the big questions that would be answered tonight.

       
Turning from my moment of doorstep reflection, I made my way down the front path, hopped into the back of the cab and asked the driver to take me over to Moseley. No sooner had he pulled off when the phone in my inside pocket began to vibrate. It was my friend Sam from Leeds.

       
‘All right, mate?’

       
‘Yeah, I’m good thanks. I just thought I’d give you a little tinkle to wish you good luck for your list thing tonight and wish you a happy birthday for today.’

       
‘Cheers, mate.’ I was touched. ‘It’s really kind of you.’

       
‘I wouldn’t go that far,’ replied Sam laughing. ‘I’m just killing time before
Where The Heart Is
. Seriously though, I hope you had a great birthday today. Did you get anything nice?’

       
‘You know, the usual: chocolate, socks and an Evel Knievel stunt bike.’

       
‘I bet you love that, you always were a big kid even back when I first knew you. Anyway, I’d better be getting off because the ad break’s nearly over. I wanted to let you know my news: I’ve started a To-Do List of my own.’

       
‘You’re kidding me?’

       
‘Absolutely not! And before you ask I’m not giving myself any kind of deadline because . . . well, because I’m not a boy and I’ve got enough pressure in my life without adding to it. No, this is just between me and a small notebook.’

       
‘I’m really chuffed for you, mate,’ I replied. ‘If you need any tips or just a simple pep talk you know who to come to.’

       
‘Yeah right, Mike Gayle: the world’s number-one expert on To-Do Lists!’

My cab pulled up outside the Queen’s Head just after nine and I’d spent most of the journey fielding text messages of support from mates who had received my early email. It felt good that so many people were on my side; that collectively people from all around the country (and even a few outside of it) were projecting positive thoughts in my direction. I handed the cab driver a crisp ten-pound note and thought there was a slim chance things could go my way.

       
I made my way through to the bar on the lounge side and waited to be served.

       
‘Are you the guy with the To-Do List?’ asked the barmaid as she poured my pint.

       
‘Yeah.’ I was somewhat surprised given that in all the years I’d been going to the Queen’s Head I’d never had a conversation with her about anything unconnected to the purchase of beer or possibly dry-roasted peanuts. ‘How do you know about the List?’

       
‘People talk,’ she said laughing. ‘I know it all: those audit things, your battle with your internet people and your jaunt up to Leeds to see
Countdown
. Some of the bar staff have been taking bets on whether you’ll do it.’

       
‘And what do they reckon?’

       
She pulled a face, which I took to mean, ‘probably not’.

       
‘And what do you reckon yourself?’

       
‘Well,’ she said, handing me my pint. ‘I suppose it’s like my mum used to say: “Strange things happen at sea”.’

       
Refraining from the temptation to give too much thought to the barmaid’s sea-faring mother I spotted my friends in the second of the pub’s two lounges huddled around the tables next to the open fire, our favourite position.

       
‘Here he is!’ yelled Henshaw across the room. ‘The birthday boy!’ People not associated with the Sunday Night Pub Club turned briefly to look at me before returning to their own conversations. I sat down on a threadbare stool that had been saved for me and looked around at my friends. All the current Sunday Night Pub Club members were in attendance (Arthur, Amy, Danby, Steve, Kaytee, Henshaw, Amanda, Gary and Jo) but there were also a few extra faces who had made the effort to come out on this special Monday.

       
‘Good to see you, mate,’ said Jim, who hadn’t been out with us on a Sunday night for at least two years. ‘From what I gather you’ve been keeping yourself pretty busy.’

       
‘Yeah,’ I replied, thoroughly pleased to see him. ‘You could say that.’

       
I caught up with all the other former members, Dave, Adam and Donna, before agreeing at the behest of the rest of the table to open all of my cards and presents before getting down to having the To-Do List audited.

       
It was great being amongst so many wonderful people, to find myself at the age of thirty-seven feeling like I was living out the lyrics of the
Cheers
theme tune. If I hadn’t been so nervous about the audit I would’ve found myself getting a little emotional about it.

       
‘Right,’ said Danby just after ten as Steve and Kaytee returned to the table with another round of drinks. ‘We’ve spent quite enough time enjoying Mike’s birthday celebrations and now it’s time for him to give us the List so that we can decide his fate.’

       
‘I agree,’ said Henshaw. ‘Come on, Mike, hand it over.’

       
I pulled out the List from my jacket pocket. I was about to hand over something private for my mates to scrutinise and I had no choice. This was what we had agreed.

       
‘Fine,’ I said. ‘But while you’re going over it I’m going to sit outside in the beer garden until you’re done. If you’ve got any queries, they should be covered by this.’ I pulled out a small exercise book and handed it over along with the List.