The To-Do List

by Mike Gayle

  We had coffee in her favourite café, Mrs Bridges, before wandering the shops around the Silver Arcade and making our way to Leicester’s Museum and Art Gallery under the mistaken impression we were in a mid-period Woody Allen movie. We talked a lot about paintings we enjoyed and other cultural things but were both wishing that we could sit down and rest our aching feet.

  Unwilling to give up the pretence that we could walk forever she took me to Castle Park where we killed time trailing around the gardens before making our way to the only film on at the cinema: Natural Born Killers.

  It was, as first dates go, both eccentric and exhausting but it was also a lot of fun and well worth re-creating (with the exception of re-watching Natural Born Killers because once was more than enough).

  ‘So what do you think?’ I asked as we sat on the very bench in Castle Park where we’d shared our first kiss. ‘Not bad, eh? Have I earned my tick for being the best husband in the world?’

  ‘Yes,’ she laughed. ‘You can have your tick.’

  On the train on the way back to Birmingham Claire looked round the carriage as though trying to summon the strength to say something that she had been stewing over for some time. ‘I’ve got a bit of a confession about you and your To-Do List.’

  ‘What about it?’

  ‘I feel stupid because it happened ages ago and I should have said something at the time but I didn’t want to seem petty, but the fact is you hurt my feelings and I think you ought to know why.’

  This was something I hadn’t been expecting.

  ‘I hurt your feelings? How?’

  ‘Do you remember back when you started the List and you asked Alexa’s advice about being efficient and getting things done?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t ask me, did you?’

  ‘But that’s because you’re not—’ I bit my tongue.

  It was too late.

  ‘No, carry on. I’m not what?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I’m not efficient and I’m rubbish at getting things done? Is that what you’re saying?’

  ‘No, of course I’m not saying that. You’re incredibly efficient. Like a well-oiled getting-things-done-machine. Not a millisecond of your time is wasted.’

  ‘So why didn’t you ask my advice?’

  ‘Did you want me to?’

  ‘Well, yes. It would’ve been nice to know that you thought of me first. That’s not too much to ask is it?’

  ‘No, of course not,’ I replied, even though were Claire to want advice on buying a new car, putting up shelves, grilling meat, England’s chances of winning the Rugby World Cup, constructing flat-pack furniture or how to kill a man with a single blow (should the need arise) the last person on the entire planet that she would come to would be me. ‘You’re right,’ I said magnanimously. ‘I should have come to you straight away. You’re a qualified teacher of adult literacy skills, a mother of two and a wife of one, of course I should’ve picked your brains first.’

  Claire smiled. I’d been forgiven. ‘It’s not like I was saying that I’m an expert, I just wanted you to ask me that’s all,’ she continued. ‘Because even if I’m not the most efficient person in the world – which I admit I’m not – it would be nice if there were one person in the world who thinks I’m great at everything.’

  ‘But you are great at everything,’ I said giving her a big squeeze. ‘I was there both times you gave birth so I’ve got first-hand evidence that you are indeed Wonder Woman. But don’t worry, your secret identity is safe with me.’ I paused and added a timely, ‘I love you, you know.’

  ‘Good,’ she said grinning as she squeezed my hand, ‘Don’t you ever, ever forget it.’

  It was two in the afternoon by the time we got home from our day out. Rushing into the living room we said hello to my mum and the kids before I delivered my next piece of news.

  ‘Look,’ I began, ‘I’m going to have to ask you a favour. I know we normally spend Sundays together with the kids but I’ve just got one last To-Do-List tick to do and it’s going to involve me being busy for pretty much the whole afternoon so I need you to mind the fort, is that okay?’

  ‘Okay, what is it you’ve got to do?’

  ‘Two things,’ I replied. ‘The first is to make a secret phone call and the second is Item 493: “Cook something out of all those posh-looking cook books that Claire keeps buying you for Christmas”.’

  Chapter 29: ‘Learn from your mistakes.’

  For as long as Claire and I have been together she has always bought me cookbooks for Christmas, presumably on the basis that, as I like eating food, it must follow that I like cooking it too. The first Christmas it was Delia Smith’s Complete Illustrated Cookery Course; the Christmas that we got married it was Nigel Slater’s Real Fast Food; the Christmas that Lydia was born it was Jamie Oliver’s The Return of The Naked Chef and the Christmas after Maisie was born it was The Wagamama Cookbook.

  I understood what lay behind her cookbook-based enthusiasm. The subconscious rationale of buying a celebrity chef’s cookbook is, ‘Look, for the price of a starter at a posh restaurant you can get access to the whole menu and will soon be living like Jamie and Jools Oliver.’

  The flaw in Claire’s seasoned gift-buying logic was that though I appreciated and often flicked through the pictures when I had a spare moment (the ones featuring raven-haired beauty Nigella Lawson being amongst my particular favourites) I had never actually cooked a recipe from any of them.

  And it wasn’t as though I didn’t cook. For the first few years after we got married I cooked virtually all the time and not just stuff that needed to be microwaved or heated up in the oven either. I cooked shepherd’s pies and chilli con carne and pasta dishes and fish dishes that I picked up from friends but for the most part I preferred to make stuff up, using whatever was hanging about the kitchen. While it occasionally ended in disaster (the vat of over-cooked sun-blushed tomato and Italian mushroom risotto lightly flavoured with the essence of burnt garlic being one such example) most of my experiments were among the best things that Claire ever tasted.

  When I ended my mystery phone call I went into overdrive trying to come up with the perfect meal that would demonstrate that, thanks to the To-Do List, Mike and Claire Gayle had made some quite significant steps towards their goal of becoming ‘proper adults’.

  Leafing through all the cookery books I managed to narrow it down to a choice between Jamie Oliver’s seafood pie and Nigella Lawson’s cornbread-topped chilli con carne. I presented the two to Claire for a decision.

  ‘I can see where you’re going with the fish pie thing,’ she said, looking through the list of ingredients, ‘but seafood, plus you never having followed a recipe before, is going to equal food poisoning, so maybe you ought to go with the chilli.’

  Claire had a point, especially as Oliver’s recipe called for raw prawns, which I always found a bit intimidating whenever I passed them on the fish counter at my local supermarket.

  ‘You’re right,’ I replied, ‘It’s got to be the chilli because a) it’s less likely to kill us; and b) it can be jazzed up with a nice salad and posh bottle of wine. I’ll do my work for today, stop around midday and then head to the supermarket to get all the ingredients.’

  Ingredient shopping was a novelty, given my inexperience with the world of recipes. Well aware that most novice cooks usually dropped the ball at this stage, I wrote down the entire list of ingredients and the quantities required. As I wandered the aisles of my local supermarket it all appeared to be bog-standard stuff that I was putting into my trolley: onions, garlic, olive oil, crushed chillies, a whole bunch of spices, two large packs of minced beef and a couple of tins of kidney beans, but then I came across something that I couldn’t find for love nor money: cornmeal.

  Approaching a young man stacking shelves with tinned peas I attempted to overcome my unease by adopting the manner of a builder looking for a bag of Blue Circle cement. ‘All right, mate. Any chance you cou
ld point me in the direction of cornmeal?’

  ‘Cornmeal?’ He looked blank.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied, chewing imaginary gum. ‘Cornmeal.’

  ‘What’s it for, a recipe?’

  ‘Yeah,’ I mumbled, looking at my shoes.

  ‘What kind of thing is it?’

  ‘That I’m cooking? It’s a chilli.’

  ‘No, what kind of thing is cornmeal?’

  ‘I’m guessing it’s like flour.’

  ‘Right then, I’ll take you to the flour aisle.’

  Despite having spent a good ten minutes in the flour aisle I had no choice but to follow and watch him going through the pantomime of looking for something that I already knew wasn’t there.

  He eventually said: ‘Looks like we’re out of it,’ and despite my unspoken love for the woman, I found myself inwardly cursing Ms Lawson and her recipes.

  I called Claire and asked her to look up cornmeal on the internet.

  ‘According to Wikipedia,’ she began, ‘cornmeal is flour ground from dried corn, is a common staple food and is different altogether from cornflour which is ground to a fine chalky white powder and is a valuable thickening agent in sauces.’

  ‘I’m still none the wiser.’

  ‘Maybe you should just leave out the cornbread-topping thing.’

  ‘No chance,’ I replied scanning the various bags of flour in front of me. ‘What’s gram flour when it’s at home?’

  Claire consulted Google and then came back with an answer: ‘Flour made from ground chick peas. Why?’

  ‘Do you reckon it’s pretty much the same as cornmeal? I mean it’s not like you’d be disgusted if someone presented you with a plate of chick peas rather than a plate of corn, would you?’

  Claire, who doesn’t like to deviate from the instructions for making instant coffee let alone an entire meal, didn’t sound convinced. ‘Maybe you should head out to Waitrose and see if they’ve got it.’

  ‘Nah,’ I replied feeling somewhat like a TV detective maverick, ‘I’m going with gram flour and stuff the consequences.’

  Later that evening as I observed the fruits of my labour, steaming and fresh from the oven, a perplexed-looking Claire entered the kitchen.

  ‘I’ve just noticed that you’ve set the table for four people not two. Is there something going on that I should know about?’

  ‘Yeah, there is sort of,’ I replied guiltily. ‘A couple of days ago I got to thinking about how all this To-Do-List stuff got started.’

  ‘Didn’t it start with our brand-new next-door neighbours and your arch-nemesis Derek?’

  ‘Exactly,’ I replied. ‘Which looking back was really stupid. Which is why I’ve invited Derek and Jessica around for dinner – to make amends and see if we can be friends.’

  Claire looked as though she was about to go nuclear. ‘You’ve done what?’

  ‘I’ve invited the nexties for dinner.’

  ‘When?’ she snapped.

  ‘Tonight. They should be arriving in about half an hour.’

  ‘You’ve invited our posh next-door neighbours round for dinner when the house is in a state, I haven’t shaved my legs in a week, I haven’t showered or got anything nice to wear that’s ironed, and you’re cooking from a cookbook for the very first time?’

  ‘It’ll be fine,’ I said sternly.

  ‘You can’t just spring this on me! And anyway it’s Sunday night. Shouldn’t you be in the pub with your cronies?’

  ‘That’s all sorted. For the first time in its six-year history the Sunday Night Pub Club is becoming the Monday Night Pub Club.’

  Claire nearly blew a gasket. ‘And there’s no way out of it?’

  ‘None whatsoever.’

  ‘Fine,’ she spat. ‘But I can guarantee you that it won’t be me who’s tidying up the house!’

  By the time Derek and Jessica turned up just after eight, the house was tidy, Claire’s legs were hair free and encased in 40-denier stockings, and I’d sampled enough of the cornbread to be assured that the consequences of going ‘off recipe’ and using gram flour were relatively mild.

  Much to my surprise the meal itself went incredibly well. Not only did Derek and Jessica find my ‘gram flour’ story hilarious but they were a lot more human than I’d initially thought. Derek confessed to having spent most of his teen years in his bedroom playing his guitar and harbouring dreams of moving to London and joining a band; Jessica had revealed that having found out I was a writer she had initially felt too intimidated to talk to us because we might think that they were a bit ‘square’.

  ‘Can you believe it?’ I said to Claire gleefully as we climbed into bed at midnight after a highly successful night. ‘Derek and Jessica were actually intimidated by us! A man who used to have toothpaste encrusted on his T-shirts and a woman who used to wear furry tiger-claw slippers! How ace is that?’

  ‘It’s brilliant,’ agreed Claire. ‘But they’re still way more grown up than we are. Did you notice Jessica’s make up? I can tell you for nothing that wasn’t Superdrugs own brand and as for all that stuff about it being so hard to find “a decent villa in Antibes to rent” at this time of year, I can guarantee that neither of them has ever been anywhere near the Butlins holiday camps I went to when I was a kid.’

  ‘Still, none of that matters. Are we totally on top of everything? Probably not. But could we hold our own in a conversation about the war in Iraq, Dr Who, and the early singles of Take That without looking stupid? Yes, we could. And that can mean only one thing: we’ve arrived at the point we always wanted to reach. We are now fully fledged grown-ups.’

  Chapter 30: ‘Turn thirty-seven.’

  The morning of my thirty-seventh birthday was near enough as good as a birthday morning can get. Following breakfast in bed (a good portion of which was polished off by the kids) I was made to open my presents. I say ‘made’ only because one of the best things about being a dad is getting the title ‘Officially the grumpiest man in the house’, and as such it was my duty to make out like I was completely not bothered by birthdays. The girls were having none of this, which was just as well. It’s hard to be even remotely grumpy when your four-year-old daughter presents you with a painstakingly constructed homemade card in which she has written the legend: ‘To the best daddy in the world.’ You’d have to be in possession of a heart of stone not to be moved by that and given that my heart was made of ordinary flesh and blood I had a bit of a moment. Just as I was beginning to well up, Maisie, for reasons known only to herself, decided to throw up the bottle of milk she’d just polished off, and Claire and I went into wet-wipe-damage-limitation mode in a bid to save our bed from permanent sick penetration.

  Once the commotion was over I continued with my present opening. Claire had excelled herself in making sure that every single present hit the spot and so as well as classic Gayle-friendly gifts like posh chocolate, jelly beans and those Lindt chocolate things with the melty stuff inside, taking pride of place atop my present mountain was a boxed reissue of the most desired toy of any boy born in the seventies: an Evel Knievel stuntman and bike.

  ‘This is brilliant,’ I gasped. ‘Have you any idea how much I wanted one of these when I was a kid? I practically begged my mum for one every day for a year and I still ended up with a junior microscope!’

  ‘I spotted it in a shop in the Bullring that’s mostly full of tat, but the second I saw it on the shelf next to a box of inflatable sumo wrestling suits I knew straight away that you’d love it. Happy birthday, babe.’ She leaned across the present pile and kissed me. ‘And now the present unwrapping is all out of the way I’m going to make sure that you have the best day ever.’

  And we did have the best day ever. It was faultless. After breakfast Lydia and I took it in turns to play Evel Knievel. For the uninitiated the Evel Knievel stunt set consists of Evel’s bike, a toy Evel Knievel doll to go on the aforementioned bike and the futuristically monikered Evel Knievel ‘Gyroscope’ that you wind up as fast as you can befo
re furiously launching Evel into whichever death-defying stunts you have laid on for him.

  Starting out coyly with a few basic jumps utilising the Evel Knievel stunt ramp Lydia and I quickly graduated to increasingly dangerous stunts and culminated in the stunt of stunts (co-created with my daughter): the Evel Knievel Loft Jump. This involved Lydia and I lining up a couple of old shelves that we’d found in the basement, positioning Evel at the bottom of them, opening the window in the loft and then revving the gyroscope so quickly that when Evel made his way up the ramp and out of the window he was little more than a blur. Racing to the window we witnessed first-hand Evel’s rapid descent, and as he crashed through the bush opposite the kitchen window terrifying our neighbour’s tabby into leaping several feet in the air we fell about laughing hysterically. We were unable to stop even when Claire was telling us off and later, at the restaurant over my birthday lunch, all one of us had to do was make a loud ‘Vrooom!’ and do an impression of the cat leaping in the air and we were both off in hysterics once more.

  ‘So was that a good birthday then?’ asked Claire as we stood in the bathroom brushing the kids’ teeth.

  ‘Brilliant,’ I replied. ‘Possibly the best ever. Evel Knievel really was a stroke of genius. It was like being ten again.’

  ‘Good,’ said Claire. ‘Even though it will probably be me rather than you that will have to explain what happened to Oscar when next door complain that he’s suffering from hypertension.’

  ‘He always was a bit nervous. I just pushed him over the edge.’

  ‘With a toy motorcycle.’

  ‘He was in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

  Claire rolled her eyes. It was the first time in a while. I had missed her constant exasperation. Getting a good eye roll made me feel that I was doing a decent job of being a husband. ‘How are you feeling about tonight?’

  ‘Okay,’ I lied. All day I’d been having these moments of dread as though my unconscious mind was counting down to the evening’s audit.