by Mike Gayle
The To-Do List
Mike Gayle
www.hodder.co.uk
First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Hodder & Stoughton
An Hachette Livre UK company
Copyright © Mike Gayle 2009
The right of Mike Gayle to be identified as the Author of
the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with
the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without
the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in
any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and
without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
Epub ISBN 978 1 848 94140 3
Book ISBN 978 0 340 93674 0
Hodder & Stoughton Ltd
338 Euston Road
London NW1 3BH
www.hodder.co.uk
In memory of Barbara Richards
who knew more about getting things done
than I’ll ever know.
CONTENTS
The To-Do List
Imprint Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Quote
Prologue
Part One - October
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Part Two - Early November
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Part Three - Late December
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Part Four - January-April
Selected Highlights from Mike's To-Do-List Diary (1)
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Excerpt from Mike's To-Do-List Diary (2)
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Excerpt from Mike's To-Do-List Diary (3)
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Diary excerpts
Chapter 15
Part Five - May-August
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Excerpt from Mike's To-Do-List Diary (5)
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Excerpt from Mike's To-Do-List Diary (6)
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Excerpt from Mike's To-Do-List Diary (7)
Excerpt from Mike's To-Do-List Diary (8)
Chapter 22
Part Six - September-The End
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Afterword
Appendix
Acknowledgements
Thanks to the following: Sue, Swati and everyone at Hodder; Simon and all at United Agents; Jane B.E; the Sunday Night Pub Club; Mark Forster aka The Time Management Guru, Alexa the Canadian, John and Charlotte; the O’Reillys, the Board, Team Gayle, Susie Dent, Jackie, Danny, Sam, Hassan, Nadine, Chris McCabe, Sharon, John, Richard and everyone everywhere that I might have missed out who helped out during my year of To Do Listing. The drinks are on me!
I don’t like the sound of all those lists he’s making –
it’s like taking too many notes at school; you feel
you’ve achieved something when you haven’t.
Dodie Smith, I Capture the Castle
Prologue
It feels odd packing my bags for a trip that’s going to take me so far away from my family. Before Claire and I had kids going away on my own used to be easy. Exciting even. Who wouldn’t have been thrilled at the prospect of a work jolly abroad? Getting ready for these trips I used to throw a few things into a suitcase, happy in the knowledge that Claire would use her time living in a Mike-free world to indulge in a spot of part-time bachelorette activity featuring long baths, hour upon hour of America’s Top Model, marathon phone conversations with her friend Charlotte and the opportunity to get a good night’s sleep without having to wrestle the duvet from anybody.
Now of course things are different. Not only does my going away even for just a couple of nights to somewhere as close as London make life difficult for my wife in terms of looking after the kids (although thankfully for this trip Claire’s mum is at hand to help out), it also feels like the hardest thing in the world to do. What if something happens in the middle of the night and one of the kids needs me? What if I’m not there to witness first-hand some new and amazing development in Maisie’s abilities now that she’s already started walking? What if I just miss the everyday to and fro of family life? In recent years I’ve turned down trips abroad for these very reasons so why is it that I am about to fly all the way to America for the sake of a $12 coffee mug? The answer, to me at least, is simple: love. I’m doing it all for love. Because no matter how you say it and how often it gets said, actions will always speak louder than words and right now, though some might call it pointless, frivolous, or just plain stupid, flying to the other side of the Atlantic for the sake of a $12 coffee mug is the one thing I want to say in the loudest possible way.
PART ONE
October
(During which a birthday, some new neighbours and a toothpaste-encrusted T-shirt led me to write a 1277-item-long To-Do List)
Chapter 1: ‘Realise that you’ve got a problem.’
The events that led me to jump on a plane to New York in pursuit of a $12 coffee mug had their origins in the Saturday before my thirty-sixth birthday. It was just after six in the morning and I was lying on the sofa in the darkness of the living room watching TV. By which I actually mean that I was slavishly working my way through the DVD box set of the second season of 24 which I had been given for Christmas some two years earlier. In the course of those two years I had not only failed to watch a single episode; I’d also failed to so much as remove the polythene wrapping. Every time I walked past the shelves in the living room where the DVDs lived I’d immediately feel guilty. I’d wanted that DVD box set more than anything. I’d imagined some unspecified point in the future when I’d have nothing better to do than sit down and catch up with the latest antics of Jack Bauer and his Kevlar body armour, yet that time was still to come around. The box had sat unloved and unopened for two whole years. Still, it was in good company. There was a box set of the first season of The Wire, the US import version (that’s how badly I’d wanted it) of the Die Hard Trilogy and the first series of Spooks. All unwatched. All still in their wrappers. And all making me feel guilty. So guilty, that having woken from a restless sleep at three o’clock in the morning, my first thought was whether I could get up early every day for the next twenty-four days, watch an episode of the second series of 24, and still find the energy to work, play with my three-and-a-half-year-old daughter Lydia, spend time with my pregnant wife and undertake the hundred and one different tasks that found their way onto my daily To-Do List. Reasoning that in my current state of mind I was never going to get back to sleep and finding myself in agreement with the adage that there’s no time like the present, I slipped out of bed, headed downstairs, turned off the burglar alarm, made my way to the DVD shelf in the living room, unwrapped the second series of 24, slid the first disc into the DVD player, settled myself down on the sofa and pressed ‘play’.
When the hinges on the door behind my head screeched open I paused the on-screen action and made yet another mental note to buy a can of oil the next time I was somewhere that sold cans of oil and
sort out the hinges. It was only a small thing, not exactly the hardest task in the world, yet it had remained unchecked on my mental To-Do List for the best part of five years.
‘Morning, babe.’ My wife entered the room. ‘You’re up early. Couldn’t you sleep?’
I shook my head.
‘What time did you get up?’
‘About three. It’s getting ridiculous. This is the third day in a row. No matter what time I get to bed, come three o’clock I’m wide awake and there’s not a single thing I can do to get back to sleep. I mean, what time did we go to bed last night?’
Claire stretched and stifled a yawn. ‘We had dinner at five, played with Lydia for a bit before taking her up for a wash, then we read her stories and put her to bed, then I came down and tidied up while you did some work in the loft and then Lydia called down to say that she’d done a poo so I went back up to deal with that, and then she said that she was thirsty so I got her a cup of water and then carried on tidying up and you came downstairs and said, “Let’s watch telly”, and so I asked you what you wanted to watch and you said, “Let’s watch stuff that makes us want to shout at the TV,” so then you found an old episode of Property Ladder, and the couple they were featuring was really annoying but during the ad break you said that you were going to close your eyes for five minutes so I did too and the next thing I knew it was ten to ten and I said we should go to bed and you said, “Just five more minutes,” so I closed my eyes again and then the next thing I knew it was ten to eleven and you were waking me up saying that we should go to bed.’ She paused to laugh her beautiful laugh. ‘Did I leave anything out?’
‘No, babe, I think that’s pretty much everything.’
This way of life had been pretty much de rigueur for Claire and me ever since we first became parents three and a half years earlier. Not that we were living a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle before that, far from it – we were probably the least rock ’n’ roll people you could hope to meet – but at the very least life pre-Lydia used to consist of a bit more than falling asleep on the sofa in front of the TV.
‘Do you think we’ve done the right thing having another baby?’ Claire mused.
‘Yeah, of course,’ I replied confidently even though I wasn’t sure at all. ‘Everything will be fine.’
‘I know it will,’ said Claire rubbing her tummy fondly. ‘But . . . I don’t know . . . before I got pregnant again I felt like we were on the home straight. We knew what we were doing. We had it all sorted out and were having so much fun. But now, well, I’ll be a “mother of two”. You’ll be a “father of two”. This baby’s going to turn us into proper grown-ups.’
Later that morning, when we’d both calmed down a bit, eaten breakfast and showered, I found myself thinking about what Claire had said. There really was no turning back. In a few weeks we would be responsible not just for one small life but two and that prospect suddenly seemed scary.
But at the age of thirty-five and thirty-three respectively weren’t we already ‘proper adults’? Technically I suppose we were. My thirty-sixth birthday was less than twenty-four hours away, I was already a father of one, a ‘propelling-you-into-adulthood’ responsibility in itself; yes, like most of my fellow thirtysomethings I was being slowly crushed by the weight of a hefty mortgage. But other than that (and enjoying playing Scrabble and finding property programmes ‘relaxing’) I was pure kid. I mean, would a so-called ‘proper adult’ spill milk under the fridge and let it sit there for weeks? Would a ‘proper adult’ take the best part of three years to post a solitary Christmas card to a close friend? Would a ‘proper adult’ have underwear in active service that was well over a decade old?
So there I was: neither flesh nor fowl; neither Big John nor Little John; neither man nor boy. Instead I was stuck between two camps – able to laugh at jokes about breaking wind and yet eligible for Big Boys’ prison should I ever find that I’ve committed murder.
That evening, as we tidied our bedroom having just put Lydia to bed, I turned to Claire. ‘Do you know what I think the problem is?’
‘The problem with what?’
‘With us. I think the problem with us is that we’re scared to commit.’
‘To what?’
‘To the idea of full adulthood.’
‘Rubbish,’ replied Claire. ‘Of course we’re not. Whatever gave you that idea?’
I led Claire to the full-sized mirror in the corner of the room and pointed. ‘That’s what gave me the idea,’ I said pointing at our reflections. ‘Look at us! What do you see?’
Claire peered hard in the mirror. ‘I see you and me.’
‘Exactly! You see “me and you”. Now answer this: do you think that Derek and Jessica look like this?’ I jabbed a finger in the direction of the T-shirt that I and my reflection were wearing. ‘Do you think that right now Derek is wearing a T-shirt depicting Sid James riding on a BMX?’
Claire began picking at a white blob of something just above my right nipple. ‘Even if he was I don’t think he’d have toothpaste encrusted onto it. How do you do that by the way? How do you get toothpaste over every single item of clothing that you wear?’
‘The toothpaste isn’t the point,’ I replied impatiently. ‘The point, babe, is us. We’re a mess. I mean do you really think that Jessica is wearing a pair of comedy tiger-claw slippers?’
‘But I like my slippers,’ said Claire indignantly, looking down at her feet, ‘they’re comfortable!’
‘I know that. You’re preaching to the choir here. But you have to admit that they’re just not very Derek and Jessica are they?’
Derek and Jessica were our new next-door neighbours as of approximately six weeks ago. Our previous next-door neighbours, Tony and Jane, a pair of grumpy but nonetheless amusing middle-aged comprehensive school teachers, had moved to Bath to open a B&B and despite our jovial request to sell their home to someone ‘fun’ had opted for the highest bidders. Financial consultant Derek and his wife, marketing consultant Jessica, in their mid-thirties, were it.
It wasn’t just that they turned up in top-of-the-range executive cars, or that pretty much every Saturday night since they’d moved in they would throw dinner parties for which a stream of glamorous-looking friends would arrive clutching expensive bottles of wine while Claire and I lay slumped in a post-chicken-dhansak-induced coma in front of X-Factor. It wasn’t even that they too had a three-year-old child with another baby on the way, and yet possessed a home that was permanently immaculate. No, what really depressed me was that both Derek and Jessica were unmistakably ‘proper grown-ups’. I couldn’t imagine either of them taking three years to post a Christmas card, owning underwear over a decade old and as for leaving spilt milk under the fridge, I was pretty sure Jessica would have a heart attack at the very thought.
‘We need to be more like them,’ I said as I gazed gloomily at our reflections. ‘We need to start acting like proper grown-ups and doing grown-up things instead of carrying on like teenagers waiting to be found out.’
‘Great,’ said Claire succinctly. ‘Maybe you can begin your journey into adulthood with a bout of kitchen cleaning because that milk you spilt under the fridge is really starting to honk.’
At the end of the night, as I put our takeaway cartons into the kitchen bin and tried not to gag at the smell wafting up from underneath the fridge, I resolved that this was it: make or break time. The eve of my thirty-sixth birthday was when I was finally going to have to decide whether I was a man or just a boy in long trousers.
‘Are you coming up to bed?’ Claire put her arms around me.
‘Not yet,’ I replied, patting her tummy. ‘I’ve got a few things to do.’
‘Like what?’
‘Nothing much, just a few things.’
As Claire headed up to the bathroom to get ready for bed I made my way into the living room, picked up an old diary that Lydia had been doodling on and one of her felt-tip pens and made my way to the loft. After sweeping a pile of discarded newspaper
s and sweet wrappers onto the floor, I settled myself at my desk and in large capital letters wrote the words that would change my life: ‘TO-DO LIST.’
It was sometime later and I was still feverishly working away when Claire popped her head around the door.
‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m writing a list.’
‘At three o’clock in the morning?’
I looked at my watch. It was indeed three o’clock in the morning.
‘I didn’t realise,’ I replied. ‘That said, it is a pretty important list.’
‘What kind of list can be that important?’
‘It’s a To-Do list.’
Sighing, she entered the room and sat on the edge of the spare bed, rubbed her eyes and ran a hand through her hair which was flying off in all directions as though trying to make a break from her head. Clearly confused by the sight of me sitting at my desk in my pants and an old band T-shirt frantically scribbling on a notepad she assumed a pained expression and focused her full attention on me.
‘A To-Do List?’ she prompted.
‘Yeah, you know, because I’ve got a lot of stuff to do.’
My wife’s eyebrows began to knit together in a mask of disbelief and confusion. My explanation obviously hadn’t explained why her husband of nearly ten years was up at three in the morning on his thirty-sixth birthday making . . . of all things . . . a To-Do list.
‘I don’t understand.’ She rubbed the underside of her belly in the manner an old gypsy lady might use to polish her crystal ball. ‘Exactly what stuff is it that you’ve got to do? And when have you got to do it?’
I looked down at my notepad. When Claire had entered the room I’d just finished Item number 253: ‘Get old baby clothes out of the cupboard in loft’ and was in the middle of Item number 254: ‘Have a go at growing a beard’.