Lists

I cannot live without lists - I have no faith in being able to remember ANYTHING for more than five minutes. At any given moment I may have on my desk downstairs a long-term list of jobs to do, and a quickie list to do urgently that day, and a list of things I want my cleaner-companion to do for me while she is with me. And of course there will be a shopping list on permanent availability in the kitchen.

Then I have a little pocket notebook which fits in my dressing-gown pocket and goes up and downstairs with me night and morning. All my great thoughts during wakeful nights, or on first waking, go in there, and in theory everything is attended to during the day before it goes upstairs again at night. But I'm afraid there are always some jobs left undone, and then they have to be ringed round so they can be picked out as I turn back the pages to see what I've missed.

Also any long kind of job that needs to be undertaken, such as clearing my husband's house, or going through his papers, has to be sort of consolidated from time to time with a list, showing what's been done and what is still to do. (This sort of list at its best serves also as a source of information for other members of the family.) Such lists may be updated several times before finally being scrapped.

However, reading lists have never proved very successful, I'm sorry to say - they never seem to get to the library with me. And shopping lists, too, seem often to get left at home in a most unhelpful way. Before long I may need a list reminding me to get up, eat three square meals, and go to bed again. Ah! me .......