The To Do List

Recently I’ve been doing so much explaining about To Do Lists and their value to the world that I almost feel like I’ve become the leader of some kind of To Do List based cult. Time and time again I’ve been sat in radio and TV station studios announcing to the world: “To Do Lists really can change your life!” have been leaving my lips to the extent that it almost feels like a mantra which it isn’t. It’s just some words that I keep repeating over and over again…wait a second…that is a mantra! Seriously though, it’s not a cult. It’s just a list, a way of encouraging you to remember the all the stuff that’s floating around in your head. Anyway, I say all this in a round about way of introducing today’s topic: gardening.

I am not a natural gardener. In fact I’d go as far as to say that I am very an unnatural gardener. I only like to do gardening when I really, really, really, have to do it and then only for fifteen to twenty-minutes when the sun is shining. Sadly however it turns out that in the real world that most people inhabit you actually have to do the garden all year around unless you want your place to look like a tip. And would you believe that includes gardening in January when it’s cold and wet and your lawn is covered in a deep carpet of dead leaves that have been there since mid-September? It’s wrong I tell you! Wrong! Wrong! Wrong! And had it not been for this January list I can honestly say that I don’t think I would’ve ventured out into the garden until April at the earliest. Still, I’m sort of glad that I did because had I not ventured down to the bottom of the garden I would not have discovered that some thieving git and broken into the shed and stolen my mountain bike (a mountain bike that admittedly I hadn’t ridden on for some time and was on another To Do list somewhere else waiting to eBayed). When I called the police and informed them of the crime they asked me when I thought the crime might have taken place. “Somewhere between the middle of September and last night,’ I replied. “It’s hard to be any more accurate than that because I actually only came outside to tidy up the leaves because they were on my January To Do List.” The policeman didn’t seem all that interested in my January To Do List, he just sort of umm and ahhed and took my details. As I put down the phone I wondered if I should go back outside and start raking up the leaves but a small voice inside my head said: “Nah, you’ve had enough excitement for today,” and so I read a book instead.

There’s still an opportunity to win £100 worth of Hodder books at www.hodder.co.uk/thetodolist. . .