The Joy of Lists - Debbie Bennett

When I was a child, I wrote lists. Huge, long lists. I would have been about ten or so and I was the kid who handed in ten pages of story at school, when everybody else had written one or two. I liked writing, even back then. I'd even ask for extra homework if it was story-writing.

But those lists. They were names. Made-up girls’ names – class registers for imaginary schools, and I’d painstakingly create all these little girls and then put the list in alphabetical order, miss one out and have to start all over again. I went through a lot of writing paper back then. I don’t know why I did it and I can’t even claim these were story characters as I never did anything else with them other than sort them into lists. But I was obsessed with them. I'd be teacher, reading the class register aloud.

My parents used to take my brother and I around stately homes and castles when we were children. Now this did fire my imagination as I could be living there, coming down that staircase, eating in that huge dining room. Of course, I was a pony-mad pre-teen and in the grounds of these stately homes, I’d be picking out where I’d be riding my horses. When I got home, I’d take big sheets of squared paper and I’d draw plans of the house I would live in, where the lake and woodland would be and the bridle paths I’d be using. It kept me entertained in the evenings when there was one television with three channels in the house and personal computers had yet to be invented. What did we do in the long winter evenings of the late 1970s, except read and write? My brother is 3 years younger than me and while we are close as adults, we could barely tolerate each other's presence as children.

From there, I realised I could actually borrow books of floor plans from the local library, so while I was carrying out my Robert Heinleins and John Wyndhams, I’d also have a couple of books of house plans too. I was a strange child. But it probably did set the stage for learning about characters and locations for writing and just seeing where my imagination took me. 

Even now I have lists. On my phone these days in our shared calendar app (Cozi if anyone is interested. The free version is perfectly adequate and includes a calendar and lots of lists; I think you can also sort recipes and generate shopping lists etc. The paid option is ad-free, doesn’t cost much and we’ve used it to organise our family events for years). I have shopping lists and to-do lists. DIY lists. Things to sort/fix/book lists. 

Lists are soothing. I’m a typical organised Capricorn and I like to plan and know what is happening. Unplanned change doesn’t sit well with me, so lists give me a measure of control in a sometimes chaotic life. Creating an admin task list for a weekday morning – process the week’s retail orders for a publishing company, run the monthly stats for same and send off, balance receipts to my bank account and pay any bills etc, write this blog post (!), sort some Moulton Glass (our family business) flyers for a series of workshops we’re just arranged, update the MG website. The list goes on, but it’s there in black and white with a little checkbox next to it on my phone. And, oh, the satisfaction with putting that little tick in each box as each task is completed! 

I have – on occasion – added an already-completed task to a list, just so that I can have the pleasure of ticking it off. The more ticks there are, the better my productivity rate. 

I’ve not yet got a list of lists, but maybe I should consider one?