The UnBucket List

You know that film The Bucket List? I haven’t seen it myself but I gather it’s about two old men, facing terminal illness, who set off an on an odyssey to do or see before they die, all the things they’ve wanted to do for years and never got around to. It sounds a good idea – something like that book (which I haven’t read) 100 Things To Do Before You Die.

Well, I have an UnBucket List. It comprises all those things I have decided I am never going to have to do again.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not unadventurous. I’ve abseiled down the local City Centre building, ballooned with one of the country’s foremost balloonists, canoed in Wales, Canada and New Zealand, glided over Dartmoor, learned to windsurf in Canada, toasted a cheese sandwich in the fumerole of a simmering volcano, walked through three countries in one day, skied down more mountains you can shake a stick at and travelled in around 15 countries. Even though I probably won’t do all (or many) of those again, they aren’t the things on my UnBucket List.

That List is of  things like skittle evenings. Long-haul flights. Driving all day to some distant town where you have to spend a dark, rainy rush-hour finding first your hotel and then the venue (even sat-nav can’t always find you somewhere to park) where you are to give a talk to those readers enthusiastic enough to leave their own cosy firesides to hear you. Usually quite a few, to be fair, and I like doing the talk & chat afterwards, but it’s the driving there & back, the night away and all the sheer time and energy it takes… These days, I’ve decided, I only do talks if I can get there and back in the day. Or stay with family or friends.

I remember once going to Kidderminster. This was before sat-nav, and Kidderminster had changed a lot since my last visit, when I was researching my Carpetmakers trilogy. It was late November, wet as only late November can be, and in the search for the guest-house where I’d been booked in, I got completely snarled up in going-home traffic and found myself exploring the one-way system in depth. Several times. When I finally found the guest-house and set out again for the talk venue, everyone was going out for the evening and the traffic and the rain were just as bad. Not only that, the one-way system seemed to be going a different way. And when I’d given the talk, having arrived panting and bedraggled five minutes before I was due to start, I faced the further challenge of finding the guest-house again. I tried every road out of Kidderminster before I found it and got there just before they locked the front door for the night. (To add insult to injury, at breakfast next morning one of the other guests had a streaming cold which I developed three days later…)

And skittle evenings. I used to enjoy these on skiing trips to Austria, when we’d all had plenty of gluwhein and were ready and willing to join in the ludicrous games organised by the rep. But the one I was invited to by friends last winter wasn’t like that. It took place in a pub somewhere in the depths of Cornwall and was organised by the male voice choir they belong to. Oh, nice, I thought, a few games of skittles, a few drinks, a meal and then a rousing sing-song. I’ll enjoy that.

Wrong again. The people were nice, my friends kind (but teetotal), and the food was good. But the skittles… well, just let’s say the games went on for rather a long time. Tournaments do. I was knocked out pretty soon, as might be expected, and after a while, knowing nobody else there, the excitement of it all sort of dwindled away.

It came to an end at last and supper was declared.  Ah. Now for the sing-song. But no. After the raffle (which went on for about half an hour, leaving me with a strange sort of vase with bits of stick in it which  I still don’t know the purpose of) it was announced that we would now do ‘Killer’. Rapturous applause. Killer? I asked. What’s that?

It was worse than the tournament. It was a kind of torture by elimination in which everyone took part – once again, I was knocked out pretty well from the beginning – and it went on for hours and hours and hours. Well, until long  after 11.30 pm, anyway. And we still had the long, dark journey home to face.

Sailing is on my UnBucket List too. I’ve done a couple of sailing holidays, one on Windermere which wasn’t too bad at all, mainly because there was no wind  and we had to use the engine quite a lot and there was always a pub to go to in the evenings, and one on Loch Lomond. There wasn’t much wind then  either, but always the possibility of it, so we had to spend an hour or so each morning threading ropes through eyelets, not unlike the procedure (which I found equally tedious) my mother used to go through when threading her old Singer sewing-machine. After that, it was a matter of trying to catch what little wind there was and get it to take us somewhere. On one day, when I learned the true meaning of the phrase ‘bored to tears’, we took three hours to go three-quarters of a mile, tacking between the mainland (I was tempted to jump ship every time we came within jumping distance) and a small island about 300 yards offshore. Gazing miserably down in to the clear water, I got to know every rock in the bed of the loch as an intimate friend and promised to send one or two of the more attractive ones Christmas cards. (I never did, though. I mean, you just don’t, do you.)

Apparently, to the man at the helm, this was a challenge of monumental excitement and a proof of his skills. Well, there’s no accounting for tastes but this may well have been the start of my UnBucket List.

And Long Haul Flights? Well, I don’t even need to tell you. Anyone who has endured one of these knows that when Stevenson remarked that it was better to travel hopefully than to arrive, he had never been on a Long Haul Flight. Not that hope isn’t a major part of it. Hope and prayer together, I’d say, and heartfelt promises to be good for the rest of your life if this could just be over soon. They say that, like having a baby, you forget the pain, but that’s not true. I haven’t forgotten either, and I’m not doing either, ever again. Not that giving birth needs to go on my UnBucket List. Nature has seen to that.

Those are just a few of the entries on my List, but you get the idea. And I was inspired to mention it because I see that the film is to be shown on TV again next week.

I shan’t watch it, though. It might just inspire me to do some of those things I always wanted to do. Like trek through Patagonia (Long-Haul Flight). Climb Vesuvius. Or go on a cruise to the Antarctic (LHF followed by sea-sickness.) It’s too much of a risk.

The Cupboard That Will Change My Life

At some point in all our lives there comes a moment when we think: 'If only [I won the lottery/had written The Da Vinci Code/got nominated to carry the Olympic Torch] my life would be so different. I would reach those sunlit uplands at last, life would be a dream and all would be plain sailing.' (Not that any sort of sailing would be easy on the sunlit uplands, except perhaps in a dream, but you get the drift.)

You might have less ambitious aspirations, of course. I do. In my case, they involve a cupboard in my garage.

This cupboard came from my old kitchen, where it had done sterling service for about 40 years according to the lady I bought the house from and, with other cupboards, when the kitchen was renovated, its destiny was to be put in the garage to continue its good work. A simple, unassuming wall cupboard, it would, along with its friends, provide me with joyous storage space in which I could squirrel away the paint tins, gardening bits & pieces, dog and cat food, spare wineglasses, tangled Christmas lights, unused windchimes, boxes that might come in useful one day, old plates, bags of pollyfilla, a juicer I used once before deciding it was easier to use a plastic lemon-shaped thingy and even, perhaps, the head of the lifesize wooden horse, built to take two men inside which was made for the pantomime of Robin Hood wot I wrote a few years ago, and which takes up most of one wall. (It's actually quite a useful cupboard in itself.) The sort of litter we all have in our garages, in fact.

All the cupboards are out there, but until I can clear a space none of them can yet be used. Not until I can start filling the wall cupboard. And I can't.

Because it is Upside Down.

It's not my fault. I got a handyman in to fix it to the wall. He was meticulous in measuring, using his spirit level and drilling holes in the right places. I was called away from my current masterpiece at least six times to hold the cupboard in position. I didn't mind - well, not much - because once the cupboard was up I could put things in it. The spare wineglasses. The dog and catfood, the polyfilla, perhaps some of the paint. Then I would be able to clear the shelves already there, remove them and fill the other cupboards (which would then be ranged neatly along the wall) with the juicer, the old plates, the rest of the paint, the windchimes, the gardening stuff and a few things I haven't mentioned because it just gets boring. And then I would be able to move some of the things out of the house - things that have no right to be there - and completely fill my lovely new cupboards. My spare room - not so much a spare room as a lobby - would be clean and tidy, and able to accommodate some of the detritus from my workroom. My workroom being uncluttered, my mind would be free to create wonderful new books. I tell you, I was really, really excited.

All it needed was this first cupboard to start it all off.

It was up at last. Nevil and I stood and gazed at it. Then he said, disapprovingly: 'I don't think much of these shelves. You won't put anything heavy on them, will you.'

'Nevil,' I said, 'this was a kitchen wall cupboard. It's had tins of baked beans and bags of flour and sugar and goodness knows what else on the shelves for the past 40 years. Of course I'm going to put heavy things in it.'

I opened the door, looked at the battens which held up the shelves. Instead of being beneath the shelves, they were above them. 'Nevil,' I said in a tone of deep, deep disappointment, 'you have put it on the wall Upside Down.'

I must say, he was mortified. For a perfectionist to make such an error, the hurt goes very deep. But nothing could be done about it then as he had to go, and when he rang later to offer to come and put it right, I said no thanks. I just couldn't bear to go through that laborious process again. Not when I had a builder in the house, who could do it in two shakes of a lamb's tail. And he would. In fact, he will. He's said so. It's just a matter of finding the time to pop in as he's passing, of remembering. And meanwhile...

Meanwhile, the garage, spare room, workroom and, by default, the entire house, remains cluttered because until that cupboard is usable I just can't seem to see my way through. And nobody, but nobody, realises just how quietly desperate I am to have a tidy garage. Starting with that one cupboard.

Once it's the right way up, I am sure Life will smile on me again. Or... could I just be making a bit too much of it...?

No. Surely not.