The To-Do List Read Online Free PDF

from the rubbish bin. It was almost as if things that needed to be done seemed to be lining themselves up just to have me knock them straight back down and, although none of them was on my official To-Do List, getting them done was a good feeling nonetheless.
            Keen for this euphoria to continue, I took a look through the List for any items particularly suited to being ticked off from where I was sitting and eventually found Item 109: ‘Be a better correspondent with people that you don’t get to see every day because even a single email once a month is better than nothing.’ I decided to email my friend Lisa.
            Since Lisa had emigrated to Australia six years earlier we’d been terrible at keeping in touch. Every time I’d come across her name in my address book I’d feel a pang of guilt and think to myself, ‘I really must drop her a line and see how she’s doing’ only to get distracted moments later by something seemingly more pressing. Well, not any more. I put some music on quietly and wrote Lisa a long letter asking about her news, telling her all mine and even adding in a selection of pictures of Lydia.
            I now felt positively glowing. No one writes long emails any more and yet I had just written and sent what was almost a novella to Lisa. And even though this solitary email might not constitute a tick (there were friends in New Zealand, South Africa, south Wales and Manchester who needed emails plus the tenor of the entry was that I had to correspond on a regular basis) I was entitled to feel that I wasn’t just a good person. I was well on my way to becoming a great person.
            I briefly contemplated a celebratory lap of the house but just as I was about to stand up the following email popped up on screen:
     
    All right, Mate?
    Just read your email! 1,277-item To-Do List! You have got to be joking! I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you, fella! Good luck.
    John-boy
     
    Which was quickly followed by this one from Nadine:
     
    Mikey babe!
    Are you mad? A 1,277-item To-Do List! I hope Item 344 is: ‘Nip down to London and have lunch with Nadine as I haven’t seen her in ages?’ It better had be!
    Best of luck!
    Nx
     
    Which was followed by this one from Chris:
     
    1,277 things! You’ve got no chance! Let’s meet up for a beer sometime to discuss!
    See you soon.
    Chris
     
    Message after message pinged into my in-box. It was great. Everyone knew what I was doing. There really was no backing out, even if I’d wanted to, which of course I didn’t. So in the spirit of doing things now rather than later I decided to tackle Item 173: ‘Sort out garden because it’s a jungle out there’.
     
    Having donned my green parka, army surplus hat and old trainers, I opened the back door and peered outside at the patio. It was covered in a thick carpet of leaves from the huge oak tree at the side of the house. Despite my strenuously wishing that they would magically disappear they had remained in situ, mocking my lack of gardening skills for some time now.
            I ventured down to the bottom of the garden and opened my shed (like me, it had seen better days) and rummaged around for the rake (a wedding present from my parents).
            Looking at the sheer volume of leaves (you couldn’t see any of the blue brick patio at all) and factoring in the leaf fall on the garden itself (three times the size of the patio) I concluded I had the wrong tool for the job. Okay, it was a rake of sorts but it clearly wasn’t designed for heavy-duty leaf clearance. On a recent drive to town I had passed a couple of council workmen and briefly admired their huge leaf-retrieval system that looked like a pair of broom handles with scoops at the end. That was exactly what I needed and as the wind began to blow, swirling the leaves at my feet and making my eyes water, I decided that a trip to B&Q was in order.
            Even though my local B&Q was relatively quiet it still