The To-Do List

by Mike Gayle

  ‘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.

  ‘What’s this?’ asked Danby.

  ‘Something I spent half of last night doing when I should’ve been sleeping: brief explanations of how I went about doing everything on the List that I think I’ve ticked off.’ I left the room.

  The beer garden was full of shivering smokers who had been banished to this concrete wasteland since the smoking ban had come in
over the summer. Amongst them were friends of friends who, unaware of my To-Do-List attempt, provided me with a welcome distraction from what was going on inside.

  It was nearly eleven by the time Arthur called me to come back inside so I finished my pint and made my way back to my friends.

  ‘Okay,’ said Jo. ‘We’re pretty much done with the counting up but we do have a few queries.’

  ‘Fire away.’

  ‘Well, Gary has a problem with your explanation of Item 416: “Overcome prison phobia so that you can sit down and watch Season One of Prison Break’.”

  ‘What possible problem could there be? You know I’ve always had a prison phobia and since starting the List I have watched Papillon, Scum and McVicar on DVD, visited a real prison in Derbyshire and met a real-life murderer. Now if that’s not overcoming a phobia I don’t know what is.’

  ‘Yeah,’ replied Gary grinning, ‘but my point was more along the lines that it didn’t say you’d actually watched Prison Break.’

  ‘There’s no way that you can disallow that tick.’ I appealed to Jo in her role as adjudicator.

  ‘Nice try, Gary,’ said Jo, ‘but I think Mike’s definitely earned that one. Now moving on to 833 to 842: “Sew missing buttons back on items of clothing”.’

  ‘I did that!’ I protested. ‘It took ages to find matching buttons for some of them and where I couldn’t I had to take off all the buttons and replace them with new ones. Have you any idea how long stuff like that takes?’

  ‘Well, we’d love to give you the tick,’ said Jo, ‘but . . .’

  She pointed at my midriff and I looked down to see that yes, indeed there was a button missing from my jacket.

  ‘Now if you persuade us that it happened since you did the repair work I might be able to allow the tick.’

  ‘I can’t,’ I replied, cursing both my honesty and my ineptitude. ‘It was in the dry-cleaners when I was tackling the button thing and I completely forgot it.’

  ‘I see,’ said Jo with mock gravity. ‘Well, that’s one tick gone then.’

  On and on they went questioning everything from my green tick (‘How can you say you’ve gone green when you flew to New York just to get a mug?’) through to my second attempt at the ‘learn Italian’ tick (because despite being able to recall pretty much everything that I’d learned from the CD I could barely remember the Italian for ‘goodbye’,) and beyond until Jo announced that we had come to the end of the queries and now needed to readjust the total and work out the final percentage.

  ‘You can take a quick walk around the block if you like,’ suggested Jo.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I’ll stay here and wait it out.’

  And so while my mates got out their pens and began arguing with each other in whispered tones I chatted with the lost members of the Sunday Night Pub Club (who thankfully weren’t involved in the business of adjudication) until my friends were ready.

  ‘Okay, I think we’re done,’ said Jo. ‘Just to remind you of the rules: we agreed that a ninety-nine per cent tick rate of the 1,277-item total would be considered to be a success and anything below that mark would be considered to be a failure. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed. So what is it? What did I get?’

  The grin on Jo’s face said it all. ‘You scored 1,269 ticks out of a potential 1,277 tasks which gives you a pass rate of 99.37% which I’m pleased to say means that you’ve made it!’

  Chapter 31: ‘Think about what you’ve learned.’

  I woke up just after ten on the morning following my supremely successful To-Do-List audit. The kids were up and washed and appeared to have been fed too.

  ‘I got your text that you’d passed your audit,’ said Claire. ‘Well done, babe! What time did you get in?’

  ‘Sometime after four,’ I yawned. ‘Celebrations sort of carried on at Arthur’s. I think there may have been some karaoke involved.’

  ‘Not Motorhead I hope?’

  ‘I wouldn’t rule it out.’

  ‘So, what’s the first thing you’re going to do with your week of freedom? Have you got any plans?’

  ‘If it’s okay with you I’m going to spend the week doing nothing. Absolutely nothing.’

  My week of doing nothing turned out to be short lived. If I had only looked at my diary I’d have seen that I had a pretty busy week ahead involving a meeting with my accountant, a library event in Sheffield and an appearance on Radio Four. On the Thursday just as I was preparing to go out to meet my accountant I got a call from Simon.

  ‘Mike!’ he boomed. ‘Long time no whatsit! How are you, mate? How’s this list thing of yours? It must be nearly done, surely?’

  ‘A couple of nights ago,’ I replied, ‘I passed. 1,269 things fully ticked off out of 1,277 which isn’t bad going I reckon.’

  ‘That’s brilliant, Mike! Absolutely brilliant! Well done you! Are you ready to write a book about it?’

  This was a good question. Did I really need a thing as huge as another book to add to my To-Do List so soon after I had just ticked everything off?

  ‘Do you know what, Simon?’ I began, ‘I think I really am. I had a problem with it before because I thought it would end up just being about a bloke ticking things off a list. I can see now that it will actually be about lots of other stuff too like family and friendship, overcoming obstacles, growing up, taking risks and learning about the things you’re really capable of.’

  There was a long pause, the sound of Simon thinking.

  ‘I can see where you’re going with this, Mike, and I like it. One man attempts to overcome a set of extreme adversities and in the process learns a number of life lessons along the way? Kind of like Bridget Jones meets Andy McNab by way of J.K.Rowling?’

  I hoped Simon’s tongue was firmly lodged in his cheek.

  ‘Just a bit higher.’

  ‘Like this?’

  ‘No, a bit lower.’

  ‘Like this?’

  ‘No, a bit higher than that but lower than it was before.’

  It was just after six a.m. on Maisie’s first birthday and Claire and I, rather than being in bed like any normal parents who had been up half the night administering Calpol to the troops, were downstairs in the living room making it suitably birthday like. We were currently standing on chairs trying to hang a banner across the bookshelf that proclaimed to anyone who cared to read it (which excluded both Lydia and Maisie): ‘Happy Birthday! You are 1!’

  Life had been good these past few weeks. I was reasonably confident that I was going to make my self-imposed Christmas deadline for the novel I had been working on all year, I’d managed to clear some of the backlog of my work-related To-Do List that had been neglected and the week before last I had had a call from Simon saying that my publishers had loved the new direction that I was thinking of taking the To-Do List book.

  Deciding that enough was enough, I climbed off the chair and surveyed our handiwork: three banners, sixteen balloons, and some twizzly glittery things hanging from the lampshade.

  ‘You do realise that you’re insane, don’t you?’

  Claire nodded.

  ‘You do realise that because I’m here helping you I’m as insane as you are?’

  Claire nodded again.

  ‘Good,’ I proclaimed. ‘Just so long as we both know that it’s completely insane to get up at six in the morning to decorate a room for a child that hasn’t the faintest clue what month it is let alone what day.’

  ‘You’re right, we are insane and though it would have been marginally less insane to have done it last night before we went to bed it wouldn’t have been quite as much fun. Anyway, it’s all for a good cause.’ Her bottom lip started to tremble. ‘It’s for our little girl.’ The lip was now in full quiver mode. ‘She’s one today, Mike. This is her first birthday and I just want her to know . . . I want her to know . . .’ Claire’s lips were now quivering nineteen to the dozen and joined by sniffing and then real lady tears, ‘. . . how special we think she is.’

  ‘I
know, babe.’ I gave her a big hug as I felt a small lip-quiver of my own.

  Still holding Claire I joked that as we’d done so well with the first two perhaps we ought to try to make a third. Claire didn’t even crack a smile.

  ‘I love them, you know I do, but that’s one part of our own personal To-Do List that you can consider having been fully ticked off.’

  Returning wearily upstairs in the hope of getting a few moments to ourselves before the day kicked in, we were met by a delighted giggle coming from the birthday girl’s room. Not only was she sitting up but somehow she had managed to pull every last one of her soft toys (from Baloo the Bear to Shaun the Sheep) off the chair into her cot and was now babbling avidly as though they were long-lost friends. When she noticed us she let out an extra loud squeal, pushed Baloo out of the way and waved both hands in the air, demanding in the way that only the cutest of tiny dictators can do, to be picked up.

  Collecting Lydia along the way we headed back to our bedroom, took all of Maisie’s presents out from their hiding place in the wardrobe and proceeded to deliver our very best rendition of ‘Happy Birthday’, before handing her the first item from her present payload. Maisie, though mildly interested in the wrapping paper, reached present fatigue very quickly and it was left to the three of us who knew what was going on to help her out.

  ‘It’s like it’s our birthday too, isn’t it, Daddy?’ observed Lydia as she tore into the wrapping on the largest of the presents.

  ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘I suppose it is.’

  Later, when things were in full swing at Maisie’s birthday party, I found myself thinking about the day, getting older and the To-Do List. I concluded that much of my initial impetus in undertaking the To-Do List was about trying to be something that I wasn’t: some stereotypical version of an adult that I was never going to conform to. I was never going to have a house that was always tidy and, try as I might, I couldn’t see the day coming when I wouldn’t look like an overgrown student. Though I could hold my own in a conversation about the state of the nation, I was more confident talking about the state of the couple on last night’s Property Ladder. As lamentable as that might sound, I was fine with it. And if one day (more likely than not on the eve of a birthday) I reached the point again where I’d got so sick of everything (the untidy house, the unsuitable clothes, the over-reliance on property programmes for entertainment) that I ended up writing yet another list, I was fine with that too because at least this time I’d be more aware of what I was letting myself in for.