Before I get started a couple of things for those of you who have been worrying about the state of the garden and my recently nicked mountain bike, (I’m mainly thinking of you, Mrs A. Harries of Barton-Under-Needwood…does no one else read this blog?????). Firstly, yes, Mrs Harris, I did indeed venture back outside to tackle the leaves and collected over a six-hour period a staggering eighteen bags worth of leaf fall from my garden all of which is now lined up at the side of the house waiting for me to find the calendar that the council sent out back in January that tells you when the next green collection is going to be. I have no idea where this stupid council calendar might be and there’s a strong chance that the leaves might stay there until next year. And as for the bike Mrs Harris, yes, the insurance people said that they would cough up for a new one.

Anyway, let’s get down to business. It’s January 28th already! How did that happen? Didn’t we just have Christmas? Wasn’t it New Year’s eve only a couple of weekends ago? This all feels wrong just I still feel like I’m in back-to-work mode! Still, the good news is that I am proud to say that I have had a couple of days of solid To Do Listing. The bad news however is that while all of the stuff that I did badly needed doing none of it was on my January To Do List. For instance I rearranged my bedroom so that you don’t walk into the bed as soon as you walk through the door and in the process discovered all the missing bits from the kid’s Fifi and the Flower Pots play set, hoovered up several tonnes of dust bunnies from the wooden flooring and collected together enough loose change to part-finance a trip to Pizza Express. In addition to this I also backed up my entire computer, logged all of my receipts for my accountant, got the guttering fixed, wrote two articles for national newspapers, spent several hours trying to find out what a LOLCAT was and finished off series 6 of Spooks (how could the writers do that to poor Jo?????). If this was any other time in my life I’d feel quite good about all that I’ve achieved in such a short space of time but sadly it isn’t which means instead that I’ve got a busy couple of days up ahead….

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. . .

With all To Do Lists there are always a few items that you put on that even as you scribble them down you know full well they will never, ever get done. And so while it’s highly likely that you’ll phone your auntie Margie, pay the gas bill or even take that jog/power walk that you’ve been talking about for ages it’s highly unlikely that you’ll cure cancer, fill in that on-line application to become a spy that you started filling in after watching the series finale of Spooks or for that matter fill in the one hundred and sixty demands from Facebook asking you to confirm how you know all these people. I tell you all this as a preamble to explaining why despite it being on my January To Do List that there is NO WAY AT ALL that I’m going bother trying to tackle item 20: “Wean youngest daughter off her dummy.”

When Claire and I handed her our youngest daughter her first dummy we knew we both knew that we were opening a can of worms that would one day end up being thrown back at us at high velocity no doubt hitting us on the bridge of our noses and leaving us with a mild concussion. We knew all this because we’d had it the first time round with our eldest daughter who sadly loved her dummy considerably more than she loved us. Had our home ever been on fire resulting in her having to make a decision about which three things she might save I had no doubt that the list would go (in order of importance) like this:
1. Dummy.
2. Mummy.
3. Milky.

Were she to have been offered a fourth choice I have no doubt that I would have been it but with just the three places on offer I have no choice but to accept that I would have been bested (and therefore condemned to a severe crispening) by a two litre bottle of full-fat milk. But anyway, I digress, my point, and I do have one, is that it was murder, absolute murder getting child number one to give up her dummy. We tried coaxing (“Oh, go on give it to us, pretty please!”), we tried bribery (“Give it to us and I’ll by you a sweet shop,”) and we even tried shame (“Look, just give it up okay or you’ll end up with teeth like Bugs Bunny,” but she was completely indifferent to both us and our suggestions and so one night we thought ‘This is stupid,’ and just took it off her. Biggest. Mistake. Ever. I have never heard screaming like it. It was like she was a superhero whose secret ability was to be able to rattle small life forms to death by use of her vocal chords. We handed the dummy back and cowered waiting for the noise to stop. It didn’t. It just carried on. All night. Like a wailing siren of misery whose single aim was to punish us for messing with dummy. We never did it again. Ever. So all we could do was wait until she gave dummy up of her own volition. Thankfully it was only another couple of months and she never looked back even once. But the thing is as much as child number one loved her dummy, child number two loves hers even more.

For those of you who have been worrying these past few days about my bee predicament (I’m mainly thinking of you, Mrs A. Harries of Barton-Under-Needwood) I’m pleased to say that having lived with them for some months now yesterday (and so far today) I’ve been completely bee free. Part of me likes to think that this is a vindication of the To Do List belief that if you leave most things that need doing long enough eventually they will sort themselves out but mostly I put it down to the Mrs playing Dido’s new album Safe Trip Home on constant loop. Bored to tears by this woman’s mithering they have either moved house or fallen asleep until the winter or Dido (whichever comes sooner) is over.

To Do List wise I have been having a very productive couple of days. I have for instance now ticked off To Do List item six: “Buy shirts that fit,” and I now have not just one but three shirts that I can button up all the way to the top without recourse to bulging eye syndrome or indeed keeling over. I have also chased up an invoice that I have spent several months avoiding because I knew it would be nothing other than a big fat pain in the backside. How did I know this? Well for instance take this piece of correspondence I received from them a while ago:
“The attached Purchase Order has not been sent to the Supplier as Saturn does not have a suitable email address. Please print and post/fax or email the attached Purchase Order to the Supplier as soon as possible.”

And how did I receive this purchase order which was sent directly from the accounts department that generated it? Would that be via an email address that they claimed that they didn’t have? Yes it would indeed! Is it any wonder that in the face of such “computer says no” mentality that I was far from excited at the prospect of chasing up my cash? Anyway, because it was on my list I chased them up and having forwarded, faxed, emailed and screamed the various bits of information that they claimed that they hadn’t received I finally took receipt of an official notification yesterday that yes, they would indeed pay me. Once I get the cheque I’m thinking of spending every single penny of it on Choco Leibniz biscuits (the Rolls Royce of the chocolate biscuit world) in a bid to make the effort involved in getting the cheque seem worth it because I’m telling you now if I have to spend it on once again off-set my every increasing electricity and gas direct debits I may well lose the plot.

Don't forget, there's still a chance to win £100 of free books here: www.hodder.co.uk/thetodolist.

I was about twelve when the whole video nasty/horror film craze happened. Mates would come into school claiming to have seen “Friday-the-thirteenth-I-spit-on-your-grave-let’s-murder-the-teenagers-staying-in-the-house-III” round at some mysterious “friend’s” house and then regale you with fantastical stories of what they had seen. I knew they were lying and they knew I knew they were lying but it was as though there was a written agreement between us all that we should never let the truth get in the way of a good yarn.

Spurred on by this horror craze I decided that I would do my bit for playground storytelling by reading horror books (my parents at the time didn’t have a video player and even if they had the last thing that they would let me watch would have been a horror film) and my favourite of these was the paranormal story The Amityville Horror in which there was a memorable scene where one of the characters in the book enters an attic room to discover the spookiest of propositions: a room full of flies in the middle of winter!!! Quite why a house being held of the grip of a paranormal experience should necessarily result in an out of season fly infestation I’m not sure, but it was definitely scary and this scene in the book always stayed with me so you can imagine how I felt when I discovered that my own attic room had been taken over by out of season bees!

They started slowly at first. I’d be sitting at my computer staring at the screen then all of a sudden I’d hear a low droning noise and I’d look up to discover that I was now eye to compound eye with a bee. Now I’ll admit that even though it was a bee and not a wasp my second instinct was to kill it (my first, was as always to scream like a girl) and within a few moments I had rolled up my copy of the Sun and was primed to send this bee on a one way trip to meet his maker when I suddenly recalled the fact that I had seen Bee Movie with my kids and quite liked it. How could I destroy an insect that had once been voiced by Jerry Seinfeld? Plus there was the fact that I’d recently read that in the UK and the US the bee population had been dramatically reduced due to a bad weather and a virus. I couldn’t kill this bee. It would be wrong.

So in the end I opened all the windows and told the bee that I was going to make a cup of tea and that he should be gone by the time I got back. Not only did he not go by the time I returned with my cuppa but also to add insult to injury he had invited six bee mates to join him. Now given the fact that it was November I knew these bees hadn’t come from outside because as any schoolboy knows bees sleep in November so I found myself asking the question: where are all these bees coming from? To which the answer I discovered yesterday when I finally got round to it, was behind the halogen light fittings. Anyway, I called a man and he came round and said, “Yeah, you’ve got bees behind your halogen lights.” So I said, “Well can you get rid of them for me?” and he said, “Nah, mate. Bees are protected by law.” And then he paused and added, “Are they bothering you?” And so I said, “What? Am I bothered by six bees flying round me head while I’m trying to work?” And he said, “Yes?” because he seemed to have missed the irony in my voice and so I just sighed and told him that I’d learn to live with it and so as I write the bees are still here.

To Do List Competition - win £100 of books

Hi again

Just to let you know that if you'd like to be entered into a draw to win £100 worth of books, you can visit www.hodder.co.uk/thetodolist to take up my To-Do List challenge - and find out how hard (or not) it really is . . .

Good luck!

It’s all gone wrong again

Hello, good evening and welcome and to the new Mike Gayle To Do List Blog.

To those of you that don’t know me I’m a gentleman novelist by day and a major procrastinator by night (who am I kidding I procrastinate both day and night) and I’ve got a book out in January called The To Do List which is all about me, my family and the year I spent trying to tackle a 1,277 item long To Do List.

Anyway to celebrate the book’s launch my publishers said to me yesterday: “Why don’t you write a blog about doing stuff? And I said “Are you insane?” I’ve already got enough on my plate as it is without you lot adding to it.” And so they said: “Go on, pretty please, it’ll be good for you.” And I said: “How exactly will me having to do extra work be good for me?” And they said: “Because it will be a blog about all the stuff that’s on your every day real life To Do List that you’ve been avoiding since you finished your book.” And so I said: “Like what?” because I thought that would wrong foot them but they just laughed and said, “We’ve already spoken to your wife, Mike, so we know for a fact that you’ve got a million and one things that need doing but thankfully we only need you to pick thirty one otherwise this would end up being the world’s longest blog.” So this is it: a month’s worth of blog where I attempt to tackle thirty-one of the 1.2 million thing that have been weighing on my mind day and night like lorry load of bricks since the year dot (or there abouts).

The January To Do List

1. To Do List Item: Post cake to cousin.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it:9 weeks.

2. To Do List Item: Finish the fourteen (that’s right fourteen!!!) books that I’ve currently got on the go.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Between five months and a year and a half dependent on the book.

3. To Do List Item: Buy a new mobile phone.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Ever since my contract ended a year and a half ago.

4. To Do List Item: Try and remember the password of the e-saver account that I opened last year and forgot all about (which may or may not have £200 in it).
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Somewhere between a year (when I first remembered that I had it) and a year(when I was first realised that I definitely had no idea what it was).

5. To Do List Item: Find missing tie.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Two days before the last time that I knew I had to wear a suit…so that will be eight months ago.

6. To Do List Item: Buy shirts that fit.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: A whole life-time

7. To Do List Item: Pluck up courage and determination require to chase up overdue invoice payment.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Three months.

8. To Do List Item: Cancel discount sim card
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Two and bit weeks.

9. To Do List Item: Write letter of complaint to Debenhams.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Two months.

10. To Do List Item: Reply to all unanswered emails.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: The majority of unanswered email is only a week old but the worst offender arrived in my in-box over 212 days ago)

11. To Do List Item: Watch the film Pay it Forward.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Well put it this way it arrived so long ago that our internet DVD club now sends us daily reminders about the fact that we could have bought it for significantly less money than we’ve paid to borrow it.

12. To Do List Item: Move offices.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: A year and a bit.

13. To Do List Item: Sort out garden.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Since the end of summer (so that’ll be June 22nd then).

14. To Do List Item: Get a capped rate from my energy provider.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Ever since I met Martin “moneysavingexpert.com” Lewis on a TV programme eighteen months ago and he told me I was insane for not doing so.

15. To Do List Item: Fix all broken things.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: In the case of Lydia’s piggy bank approximately 45 days and in the case of the bed I broke while dancing on it probably more like a year.

16. To Do List Item: Find out where the bees in the loft are coming from.
Length of time so far spent procrastinating over it: Put it this way it’s been 38 days since the first bee appeared.

17. To Do List Item: Remove tongs from back of the cooker.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Early(ish) spring.

18. To Do List Item: Get rid of fence panels from side of house.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Approximately 98 days (and counting)

19. To Do List Item: Iron every last item in the ironing basket (even the stuff that’s been in there since the summer before last.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Months, years, it’s too hard to tell. Basically ironing (or rather not ironing stuff) is always on my mind.

20. To Do List Item: Wean youngestdaughter off her dummy.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Each and every day since we first handed it to her two years ago.

21. To Do List Item: Answer the phone more.
Length of time so far spent procrastinating over it: Ever since my family sat me down six weeks ago and bellowed at me: “Why do you never answer your phone?”

22. To Do List Item: Replace batteries in all kids toys.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it:344 days

23. To Do List Item: Use up all “exotic” tinned purchases and impulse buys (e.g. lychee fruits in syrup and tempura batter mix)
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Ever since I first bought them (which if the use by date on the tinned aubergine is to be believed may well be up to three years ago).

24. To Do List Item: Purchase a new duvet.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Since the first cold snap of the year (so that’ll be August then)

25. To Do List Item: Sort out pictures of kids for parents.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: It’s actually 324 days on the dot. I know this because my mother-in-law is keeping count.

26. To Do List Item: Fix guttering at side of house.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Roughly 108 days (I know this because my wife has just handed me a note saying “It’s been 108 days since I asked you to sort this out. If you have any love for me at all PLEASE DO IT NOW!!!!!”

27. To Do List Item: Scan in some old photos to your Facebook page.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it:161 days

28. To Do List Item: Buy a new telly.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Eight years!

29. To Do List Item: Find the spare house keys.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: I think about the keys every time I go out and wonder to myself how I’ll get back in should my wife be out and I ever lose the ones in my hands.

30. To Do List Item: Post (and in some cases write) all belated Christmas cards.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: When was Christmas again?

31. To Do List Item: Hand out finished copies of the To Do List to the people who appeared in it.
Time so far spent procrastinating over it: Ever since they arrived in a big box at my house six weeks ago and I realised there would be nothing I could do to stop my mates from reading about themselves.