# I love it when the first of the month is on a Monday. It just seems so right...
I have written an 'activity list' rather than a 'to-do' list. It seems less demanding, less authoritarian. If I'm at a lose end, I can just pick something off the list;
Read a book
Clean the bathroom and loo
Play the piano
Sow spinach and pak choi seeds
Knit some socks
Carry on relearning how to make granny squares
Paint or draw
Pay the bills
Make more flapjack
Write in notebook
Do some exercises
.... and so on. None of these things have deadlines, so I really can take my pick.
Today I sowed the seeds, taught a piano lesson and wrote in my notebook. Good-oh.
For lunch we had breaded haddock, left-over potatoes cut into chips, tossed in oil and roasted in the air fryer, and peas. As I tipped the frozen peas into the little pan to microwave them, I realised too late that some of the peas were spilling over the floor.
They skittered about like frosty green marbles, and stuck to my socks. Luckily they were easy to sweep up before they melted (thank you, BB)
Music
I said I would take a break...
But, here is Kenny Ball, with his jazzmen, playing 'the green leaves of Summer'
and here is Herb Alpert's version
I am 84 years old from the midwest of USA. I remember my dad quoting that little poem to me when I was just a little girl.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure I heard it from my father (born 1929) or my grandmother... I always thought it was Edward Lear...
DeleteThat is a lovely activity list 👌 perfect for the start of Autumn. I must resolve to do some baking now its cooler. Flapjacks sound good.
ReplyDeleteA lovely choice of music...
Angie x
Thank you. Of course, the 'activity list' has grown... and there is another list of Must Do, thankfully much shorter!
DeleteI grew up believing it was by Spike Milligan, and in the USA it's often attributed to Ogden Nash. But it was neither of these witty chaps...just Anon [so it might even have been written by a woman!]
ReplyDeleteI think it was Virginia Woolf who waspishy remarked that 'Anon' was as likely to be a woman as a man!
DeleteIs that Herp Alpert version from a film - a Western maybe?
ReplyDeleteYes, I discovered it was from The Alamo, a Western with John Wayne. There's a very atmospheric clip from the film of the night before the battle with Herb Albert's version, but it ends with the scene after the battle - too, too sad in the light of Gaza, and other conflicts . Still worth watching.
DeleteAn activity list sounds much less demanding than a to do list, with an element of choice, which is always a bonus.
ReplyDeleteThat's what I thought! It's working so far (but 24 hours isn't much of a test)
DeleteWhat a very focused list. All I have done today is to pay the bills!
ReplyDeleteOh, I haven't done ALL of it!
DeleteAn activity list sounds like a great start to getting things done. There's less pressure and I guess less of a sense of failure if you fail to do it all. I've always loved that 'pea' poem. I wondered if it was someone like Ogden Nash who coined it.
ReplyDeleteNo sense of failure even if none of it gets done this week... even the bills!
DeleteLove your list and very achievable too and you 've completed 3 already!
ReplyDeleteI have a little glow of satisfaction in my heart!
DeleteI just commented on another blog about how I liked a month starting on a Monday. I wonder what that says about us.
ReplyDeleteIn winter I'm more apt to have an "activity" list. During the gardening months I find things I need to do wherever I look :) No need for much of a list.
I've only ever known those 4 lines of that amusing poem. I didn't know there was a "middle".
I should explain, I knew the first and last lines, but could never quite remember lines 2 and 3!
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