I’ve got a little list but there’s none of the items on it will be missed

‘HERE you are, Medders. This should keep you busy.’ Hermione handed The List to her husband, who took it meekly. Considerable time and thought had gone into inscribing The List in block capitals on a sheet of stiff white board. Had The List been presented on paper, he might have been tempted to fold it and then slip it into the back pocket of his scruffy tracksuit bottoms. But and as it had been drawn up with such obvious effort, he felt this might be considered disrespectful. So he furrowed his brow, adjusted his spectacles, and made a show of examining the contents. He extended his arms in order to have his eyes squint exactly right on the impeccably neat script.

‘I feel like I’m back in school, dearest, being given my homework,’ he laughed nervously, looking up briefly from his study of this formidable document.

‘ Then I look forward to awarding you ten out of ten upon my return,’ responded Hermione brightly, in the manner of an enthusiastic primary school teacher. ‘Or rather five out of five. I am not so sure that you can count up to ten these days – at least not when there is work to be done.’ He did not respond to this acidly barbed remark as he knew well when he was on shaky ground. He simply could not deny having been less than dynamic the last time his beloved took a short break away.

On that occasion The List was assembled on a whenever-youget-around-to-it basis, with at least a dozen bullet points on the page. On that occasion she discovered when she came back to the Manor that her husband was blessed with no real sense of proportion or priority. On that occasion he had been side-tracked by the last item – ‘ Tidy The Attic’ – at the very bottom of the sheet.

It had been tacked on at the last minute on the off-chance that he would have accomplished everything else on the agenda. Instead of following this logic, however, he started at the bottom - and then remained stuck at the bottom. Hermione arrived back to find that the new lampshade was still in its box and the weeds in the window-box were running rampant, while all the other little tasks suggested were similarly unattended to, except the last one.

There was in truth not much sign of the attic actually being tidied either but there was evidence that Medders had at least spent considerable man-hours in the dusty space under the rafters. An area had been cleared in which he had re-assembled the train set of his boyhood, though essential components were missing and there was no chance that the model locomotives would ever run again. It was a scene at once both touching and exasperating, a scene which Hermione emphatically hoped never to see repeated.

So this time, she adopted a more calculated, more focused, more scientific approach offering less wriggle room in the devising of The List:

One: mow the lawn – that would at least give him some exercise. Two: check premiums with a view to switching car insurance – tangling with call centres is good for the soul.

Three: pick the raspberries in the Side Garden and make jam – raspberry jam being her favourite.

Four: weed the window-box – second time lucky maybe. Five: wash and dry a batch of dirty clothes – high time he mastered the washing machine after all these years…

He fully accepted the value of having boxes to tick and jobs to complete. Even as he waved Hermione off, still clutching the precious sheet of stiff white board, he pondered that it was surely good to have a list - but maybe not The List. He pottered into the kitchen and found an old stub of a pencil. He flipped The List over and began writing on the blank side:

One: go to the driving range and straighten out the tee shots – nice way of getting some physical exercise.

Two: master the cryptic crossword in the paper – tangling with anagrams is good for the brain.

Three: pick the raspberries - and eat them.

Four: weed the window-box – best to show some way willing. Five: wear the same clothes four days in a row – much more efficient than washing stuff that is practically clean anyway.

Now, where was his old Scalextric set?