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Of felonious friends, lists, fulfilling lists and future lists.

I am a writer of lists. Like my father, who probably still writes lists, I get bogged down in the detail of the day ahead, panic at the imbalance between jobs to do and time in which to do them and attempt to calm my inner turbulence by writing down all the things I hope to achieve in a list.

And subsequently fail to achieve much at all.

 A good day will be a 'two-er' - one in which two items on the list are scored through. 'One-ers' are pretty acceptable too. Far too many days though, end in a self-inflicted debate over whether I can justify a hashed line through a task partially completed. And I often write "make list" on my list for the following day, thus perpetuating the rolling disappointment and failure.

Some occasions are associated with more frantic list making than others. I am currently in the frenetic period pre-holiday-departure which has to be up there, with pre-wedding, at the top of the list making league. I make lists, then sub-lists to clarify the 'tidy garden' item and sub-list sub-lists to ensure that not only do I clear the bed above the wall of weeds, but that I also water the new plants in the afore-listed bed above the wall.

Then I lose the list, or sub-list. This used to result in recriminations directed against self by self, but these are pointless and serve only to make one's self esteem shrink. Now I shrug. And smile benignly and suggest to myself that it is quite probable that most of the items in the misplaced sub-list have been achieved already anyway and it's time to pat oneself on the back. It is best not to tell oneself that one has found the lost list later. And it is very bad practice indeed to read the list that was previously unaccounted for. Because there is absolutely no way that you are going to have the time to do all the things you had forgotten were on 'that' list.

On my penultimate pre-holiday-departure list for tomorrow, I had written construct 'cage' for red and white currant bushes (following the demise of my Heath Robinson fruit cage, which lasted eight years so can't have been too Heath in the Robinson department). However, my friends alerted me to the very near ripeness and deliciousness of the rapidly disappearing fruit and in doing so have turned the task of currant-protection into one of harvesting-to-freeze.




Currant thieves! Led astray, one felonious friend




by another


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