The sticky notes are threatening to take over my desk altogether
BACK-TO-WORK week. I am sitting at my desk looking at my computer screen. The edge of my Mac is almost entirely obliterated by brightly coloured Post-its.
I invested in a jolly pack of ‘designer’ sticky strips a couple of weeks ago thinking they would change my life. On them is written everything I need in my life. Hastily reconfigured passwords, reminders to buy everything from make-up remover to milk, bills I must pay, onerous medical appointments I must make — plus nice things like ‘Skype BF Dee!’ and ‘Book Summer Holiday!’. Others are cryptic and I have no idea what they mean — ‘Tom: seat AND fish!’ — but they were probably very important at the time.
Needless to say, none of my stickynote tasks are actually getting done and I am still panicking over lost passwords. My propensity for writing and then thoroughly ignoring my to-do lists is legendary. What I have done, now, is create an art installation; a representation of all my failings in pretty coloured strips. If I was Tracey Emin, it would be worth a fortune. But I am not Tracey Emin. I’m just a middle-aged working wife and mother with too much on her plate. The format may have changed but the inertia hasn’t.
In the last few weeks, with the end of the year coming, I have been frantically trying to catch up on work. Those on-spec (writers’ speak for unpaidnow but potentially lucrative) TV treatments I promised to have in to my agent by the end of the year. The first ten chapters of a novel are due in with my London editor — except I haven’t decided what it’s about yet. The year is gone and I seem to have produced nothing concrete since early summer.
What have I been doing all this time? Not the stuff on the sticky notes anyway. They are threatening to take over my desk altogether but I can’t face picking through them without coffee.
Out in the kitchen I remember that I am trying to come off the sugar. I’ve been mainlining mince pies since I allowed them in the house, a week before the big day. Christmas confectionery is, I believe, a kind of cocaine for middle-aged people. Nobody under 30 seems to like raisins or marzipan, but I can’t even have them in the house. (I would, literally, eat mincemeat out of the jar.)
Coffee without sugar is out of the question, so I go rummaging around on the tree for a bit of chocolate. Niall and I argued about where the tree should go. He said by the window, but I was worried about blocking the view and made him put it next to the fireplace. Then, after all the decorations were on, I changed my mind and made him move it back to the window.
IT’S that kind of palaver, I realised, that has stopped me from getting my work done this year. I rooted around in the decorations box and found a chocolate coin of indiscriminate vintage, comforting myself that it’s not really chocolate at all, but some kind of synthetic, brown sugar-infused lard so it never goes off.
As I peeled it open I looked out at the view. Even though we built next door to our old house, Killala Bay looks different from here. It’s a great cause of comment. People tell us and we believe that we have a ‘better’ view now, but in actual fact, it’s the same. It’s just that our new house is beautiful. But then, our old house was beautiful too — in a different, more characterful way.
It’s not the view that’s better after all — but our life. And not just our life — but us. We are settled. We are a family again. This time last year we had just spent Christmas in my mother’s house. She was great to have us but we were still ‘between’ homes.
Sure, building our own house was an exciting adventure, but it was no mean feat. We were stressed and insecure. Uncertain of what we could and couldn’t afford. Now, less than a year later, the plates are in the presses and our Christmas tree has its spot. In the eight months since we moved, we have been unpacking and getting comfy. We’ve been turning our new house into a proper home.
And, I realised, that’s what I’ve been doing for the past year: building a new life. I’m not lazy — I’m only fantastic! The sticky notes can wait. I’m going up to Centra to see if they have any mince pies left so I can celebrate.