76. A Holiday List

Not a list of holidays I would like to take, places I would like to visit, but a list of things I must remember to take with me when I go on holiday. A scrap of paper brimming with promise. Its creation yesterday meant that it is not long now before we take off for the wilds of, well, Suffolk - for a week's actual holiday. No work, just play.

So the list sits on the side of the fridge, and will be added to daily until it becomes grubby and marked with smeary fingerprints and smudged ink and inevitably we'll forget to put something vital on it, but as the list grows longer so the distance between me and my holiday grows shorter. The list is my collaborator in fun.

I think you are either a list person, or you're not. I make lists as a work-avoidance technique, or, as is more customary, because I don't want to forget something - like nail varnish, or, more importantly, nail varnish remover. My bathroom cupboard is full of small pots of nail varnish remover bought from chemists in unlikely places - so the lists are clearly fulfilling a vital function, and I really should pay more attention to them.

I'm wondering now if I could make lists for serious things, like career goals or books I tell people I've read but haven't really. But that starts to look uneasily like a five-year plan, and they are the work of the devil. I haven't got a plan for this week, let alone any further along the line. I'd only lose the plan and forget to finish my novel, or take the Trans-Siberian express, or own a 1964 Porsche Speedster, or teach a dog to run alongside me for five miles... It would be a shame not to do those things because I'd lost the list, so I'll continue to make lists for holidays, and nothing else.