Things To Do

When Liz and I were working, both of us had the kind of jobs where your working day was made up of a hotch-potch of different bits from a broad range of types of task. In my case, being IT based I'd have hardware assembly and moves going on, users to 'create' and manage, projects to manage, management information to compile for periodical and one-off reports and at some stages also a warehouse assembly team to plan, deploy, rotate, control holidays and absence for and so on. They were the sort of jobs where you needed a "To-Do" list or you'd lose track. Sometimes this would just be on a pad or note book but if we were feeling tired, under-manned and over-worked (quite often!) this would go onto the dry-wipe board on the office wall and if somebody came in to give you more work who you didn't feel like co-operating with in any kind of a shiny, enthusiastic way, you could stride theatrically over to the board and write his job somewhere way down the list to make sure he understood that it might not happen any time soon. To-do lists also give you the satisfaction of crossing out or highlightering jobs when they are complete.

Well, I am back into 'To-Do' lists now in my not-so-as-you'd-recognise-it 'leisured' retirement. Mentally it is in three parts - REAL jobs which will actually get done, Jobs that will happen (Projects which will start) if we get any small financial windfall (e.g. an endowment ripening) and then jobs that we'd love to do if we win the lottery. The latter list is unlikely given that we very rarely do the lottery, but it includes major works like "Build conservatory on end of kitchen and incorporate Tígín building into house". The latter two bits are just mental lists and we can ignore them for the purposes of this blog. The REAL list 'lives' in my bound note book and just out of interest I thought I'd share the current list with you to give you some idea what I am meant to be up to over the next few days and weeks. I have added explanatory notes where you might need some fleshing out of the raw statement.

Things to do as at 22nd Feb 2013

• Dog-proof fences and gates round yard
• Clear up 'sneddings' on Vendor Anna's land (Sneddings are the thin branch ends left when you cut out all the decent sized logs from a tree. This rubbish is still lying in the field where Bob and I felled the ash tree and need tidying into the hedge)
• Dig Pond
• Hanging-garment rod in Utility Room ceiling
• Hedge trimming in East field (see picture - we are currently most of the way round and can nearly tick off this job)
• Cat flap on Utility Room door
• New canopy on raised bed mini-poly-tunnel cloche
• New doors on chicken house and calf house.
• Work top in kitchen where 6 foot fridge-freezer used to be
• Fireplace (hearth) in Living Room (This is the only incomplete bit of the original house-build project)
• Stainless steel anti-cat panel on kitchen wall. (Cats are messing up the wall scrabbling up to the window-sill)
• Car-port over caravan
• 'Greenhouse' in 3rd bay of former hay barn, to be built out of corrugated transparent plastic
• Gut 'shower room' and galley out of caravan
• Build 4th berth in caravan
• Stand caravan on blocks with wheels off ground
• Close-able doors on rabbit run 'bedrooms'
• Pallet sized water tank plumbed to sheep drinker in orchard
• Pallet sized water tank plumbed to sheep drinker in east field
• Drinker in east field
• Burn hedge trimmings in east field
• Fencing east field (sheep proof)
• Clean outside of caravan (algae etc)
• Brambles on road edge of front lawn
• Mow round outsides of allotment and orchard, under larches and along both sides of lawn hedge.

That's it for the moment, unless we can think of any more. Should keep me out of mischief. You never get bored, anyway!