The To-Do List (4 page)

       
Despite its title the Sunday Night Pub Club isn’t so much a club as a loose collective of friends who get together once a week in the Queen’s Head pub (commonly known as the Queen’s), for a drink and a chat. At first this was a strictly boys-only affair that convened on a Thursday night but then Thursdays got too busy so Sunday became the new Thursday (which in itself had been the new Friday) and somewhere along the way we were joined by various girls who in spite of their fundamental fragrance could drink pints and hold their own in conversations that required them to rank pretty much everything into a Top Ten. Having gone through several line-up changes over the six years that we’d been in existence we were now down to a relatively solid (but classic) line-up of nine members: Arthur, Amy, Danby, Gary, Jo, Henshaw, Steve, Kaytee and Amanda.

       
‘So what exactly are you saying?’ said Arthur. ‘That you’ve written a To-Do list?’

       
‘It is a To-Do List of sorts, but actually it’s much more than that.’

       
‘In what way?’

       
‘In every way.’

       
‘Yeah, but in what way exactly?’

       
‘Well, in the way that it’s probably more like a manifesto.’

       
‘A manifesto for what?’

       
‘A manifesto for life . . . a manifesto for anyone who has ever sat down and thought to themselves “If only I had more time I’d do this or that” . . . in fact it’s a manifesto for people like us.’

       
‘He means a manifesto for grumpy thirtysomethings in ill-fitting clothes who hate their jobs,’ said Danby dryly.

       
‘And this manifesto,’ asked Henshaw, ‘has got how many things on it?’

       
I coughed nervously, aware of the mockery I was about to receive.

       
‘At the last count, it was 1,277.’

       
The whole table exploded with laughter so violent it threatened to upturn several pints.

       
‘You’ve honestly got a one-thousand-two-hundred-and-seventy-seven-item-long To-Do List?’ said Kaytee. ‘Mine usually max out around thirty.’

       
‘This is brilliant!’ laughed Arthur. ‘That will take you forever!’

       
‘I was thinking I’d give myself until my next birthday.’

       
‘Actually.’ Henshaw pulled a contemplative face. ‘To give Mike his due that works out roughly to about three and a bit things a day, which I reckon is pretty doable.’

       
‘If they’re easy-to-do things,’ countered Arthur. ‘Is everything on the list easy to do?’

       
I shook my head. ‘There’s loads of stuff that will take weeks if not months. Stuff like losing weight, getting hold of lost friends and learning basic Italian.’

       
‘Is parachuting on your list?’ asked Amanda, reaching into her bag for a pen. ‘If it’s not I’ll put it on for you.’

       
‘No,’ I replied sternly.

       
‘Why not?’ Amanda looked hurt.

       
‘Because it’s not about jumping out of planes or any of that business, it’s about more everyday things. The kind of stuff that you ought to do but can always find a good excuse for not doing.’

       
‘Like cleaning out the guttering?’

       
‘Exactly.’ I scanned my list. ‘Item number 970: “Clear leaves from gutter”.’

       
‘Or sorting out damp patches in your hallway,’ suggested Danby.

       
‘Right on the nose. Item 125: “Sort damp patch in bathroom”.’

       
‘Right,’ said Amanda, ‘I get you now. I’ve got a To-Do List of my own like that as long as my arm.’

       
‘But I bet it’s not 1,277 items long,’ said Danby adopting his usual stance as the Sunday Night Pub Club’s resident cynic. ‘Who really has that many things on their To-Do List? This just sounds made up.’ He held out his hand. ‘Come on, show me the list! Let’s see what kind of stuff is on there that you think you need to do.’

       
‘Hands off! Lanky one! Until it’s over no one gets to see the full list but me.’

       
‘So no one’s seen the list? Not even Claire?’

       
‘She’s seen bits of it – before I really knew what I was doing – but not the full thing . . .’ I paused for a moment. ‘Oh, and Claire’s friend Alexa has seen bits of it too.’

       
‘Okay,’ said Gary (who is often quite quiet on a Sunday night given that his Saturday nights tend to go on until ten or eleven on a Sunday morning). ‘You’ve got your list and now it’s got integrity, so what’s next?’

       
I surprised myself by the determination in my voice. ‘Well it’s this: I’m actually going to do it.’

Chapter 4: ‘Regardless of how ill prepared you are, head off like a bull in a china shop.’

Every now and again, when friends drop by for a cup of tea, Claire likes to share with them a pair of amusing stories that don’t exactly show me in the best possible light. The first, referred to as ‘the bull incident’ involves a charging bull and an allegation (which I strongly deny) that several years ago when the aforementioned bull charged us as we crossed a field, I abandoned my wife-to-be at the first sign of danger and leapt over a fence to save myself. The second story (which I admit is true) concerns a spectacularly awful attempt at DIY.

       
Waking up on a Good Friday morning in a pre-kid world filled with the cheer of the forthcoming long weekend, I decided that I would take action on the myriad DIY tasks that needed doing around the house. And while there were window latches to fix, pictures to put up, leaking taps to attend to and a loo flush that sounded like a foghorn to sort out, I decided that the most pressing job lay somewhere else entirely. Today, I was going to paint the ugly brown floor tiles in the conservatory.

       
Most normal people would have done some minor investigation into the world of tile painting but I wasn’t exactly normal people. Before Claire was even out of bed I’d got up, showered, breakfasted, made my way to B&Q and returned home with eight litres of brilliant white paint. Now, you’d be forgiven for thinking that even with a cursory knowledge of the nature of tiles, I’d have bought a special tile paint or at a push a floor paint specifically designed to adhere to non-porous floor tiles. Sadly, I did neither of those things. Reasoning that all paint was pretty much the same, I purchased a brilliant white paint with an eggshell finish designed to be applied to internal walls and ceilings. Nowhere on the tins did it say that it was okay to use it on floors and when Claire pointed this out, having entered the kitchen in her dressing gown to find me on my hands and knees daubing huge dollops of paint all over the conservatory floor, my reply was a casual comment along the lines of, ‘You worry too much, it’s paint. How wrong can paint be?’

       
Two days later, having persuaded Claire to finish off the job that I was no longer interested in, we found out.

       
As we placed the conservatory furniture on the pristine white floor for the first time, we were horrified to notice huge swathes of white paint lifting up the second they came into contact with anything abrasive. Within a matter of hours the conservatory floor went from looking like an expanse of newly fallen snow to the slushy mess left behind on a busy urban street a day or two later.

       
I share this story in order to illustrate an important fact about myself: when it comes to an undertaking, I am the very definition of: ‘Act first. Think later’. And the To-Do List was no exception.

       
The morning following my announcement to the Sunday Night Pub Club I’d felt on top of the world. Fired up by the commitment that I had made in front of my friends and with my mind racing with anticipation at getting stuck in, I shared my good news with Claire over breakfast.

       
‘So you’re actually going to do this list thing?’

       
‘Absolutely. I really think tackling the List is going to be the making of me.’

       
‘I’m sure it will be,’ said Claire dryly. ‘So what’s the plan? If you are going to start as of today may I suggest, “Help Claire out with the ironing because the To-Do ironing basket upstairs is bursting at the seams”.’

       
‘I’d love to, babe,’ I replied, ‘but I’m afraid ironing is not on the List.’

       
‘It wouldn’t be, would it? So what exactly is your plan of attack? Have you got any strategy?’

       
‘Other than looking at the List and doing stuff on it?’

       
‘Trust me, Mike, I know you better than you know yourself and I’m telling you that you’ll need a plan of attack if you’re not going to get bored with the whole thing after ten minutes. Just remember the tile-painting episode.’

       
‘That was different,’ I protested, but had to stifle a smile.

       
‘Different how? Different because you tackled a job in a half-cocked manner without having a plan? Or different because it wasn’t you that got bored halfway through and talked me into finishing it off while you watched TV?’

       
This woman was definitely raining on my parade.

       
‘Just different. The To-Do List is a different kettle of fish altogether, okay? It’s not a brown-tiled floor, it’s a To-Do List.’

       
‘It doesn’t matter, you still need a plan,’ said Claire giving me her best “this will all end in tears” shake of the head. ‘You can’t just race headlong into the List hoping that a bit of luck and sheer momentum will take you all the way through to your next birthday.’

       
‘Oh, really?’ I replied in a high-handed manner. ‘Well, we’ll have to see about that.’

I made my way upstairs to my office in the loft, sat down at my desk and began looking around for inspiration. Before it struck, I accidentally knocked my computer mouse and within a few moments I was notified by electronic ‘ding’ that I had seven emails waiting.

       
There wasn’t anything exciting: some spam; a number of invitations to buy stuff from John Lewis and Amazon; and a mocking message from Arthur offering a hard cash bet that I would fall on my face with this To-Do-List thing before the month was out.

       
Fighting talk! I dashed off a dismissive reply to Arthur and then the following email to friends, family and work colleagues, in fact everybody in my online address book:

Dear all,

Just wanted to let you know that having come to the conclusion that it’s about time I joined the world of fully functioning adults on a permanent basis, as of today I will be undertaking a 1,277-item To-Do List (while continuing with my regular ‘day job’) which I plan to have completed by my 37th birthday in approximately twelve months’ time. The reason I’m telling you lot this is to give me the inspiration and motivation to succeed, knowing full well that should I fail my task I will look like a complete and utter buffoon in front of you all and will afford you the right to mock me (as some have done already) to within an inch of my life.

See you all soon

Mike x

I read and re-read the message several times before pressing send and then watched keenly as my computer’s email programme flung the hundred or so messages it had loaded up out into cyberspace. There was no going back. Right there on the spot I was officially motivated. Feeling as though I was still riding the crest of a wave I replied to all the emails in my in-box and then permanently deleted all 122 items of spam from the rubbish bin. It was almost as if things that needed to be done seemed to be lining themselves up just to have me knock them straight back down and, although none of them was on my official To-Do List, getting them done was a good feeling nonetheless.

       
Keen for this euphoria to continue, I took a look through the List for any items particularly suited to being ticked off from where I was sitting and eventually found Item 109: ‘Be a better correspondent with people that you don’t get to see every day because even a single email once a month is better than nothing.’ I decided to email my friend Lisa.

       
Since Lisa had emigrated to Australia six years earlier we’d been terrible at keeping in touch. Every time I’d come across her name in my address book I’d feel a pang of guilt and think to myself, ‘I really must drop her a line and see how she’s doing’ only to get distracted moments later by something seemingly more pressing. Well, not any more. I put some music on quietly and wrote Lisa a long letter asking about her news, telling her all mine and even adding in a selection of pictures of Lydia.

       
I now felt positively glowing. No one writes long emails any more and yet I had just written
and
sent what was almost a novella to Lisa. And even though this solitary email might not constitute a tick (there were friends in New Zealand, South Africa, south Wales
and
Manchester who needed emails plus the tenor of the entry was that I had to correspond on a
regular
basis) I was entitled to feel that I wasn’t just a good person. I was well on my way to becoming a great person.

       
I briefly contemplated a celebratory lap of the house but just as I was about to stand up the following email popped up on screen:

All right, Mate?

Just read your email! 1,277-item To-Do List! You have got to be joking! I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you, fella! Good luck.