WordPress Daily Prompt: The Satisfaction of a List

Who doesn't love a list. So write one! Top five slices of pizza in your town, ten reasons disco will never die, the three secrets to happiness - go silly or go deep, just go list-y.

It’s a thing with lists. We always have a sort of sticky note pad clamped on the side of a cupboard in the kitchen. Getting older is not fun, especially when you are only left with a long distance memory. My shopping list memories from last year, or five years ago is of no use, when I need the stuff today to cook a meal, so Mr. Swiss and I are regularly jotting down what seems to be missing in the kitchen cupboard. Funnily enough we often forget to take the shopping list with us, but somehow it gets impressed on your ageing brain what you actually wrote down. A sort of a photographic memory I suppose.

I remember one Christmas a few years ago. My chief cat decided to make a Catmas list (they do not have Christmas, something more of a Bast idea from Egypt). Anyhow she pondered a few minutes, consulted her feline colleagues and this was the result.

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Not exactly my sort of thing, but felines were Gods once, so I suppose there is some sort of hallowed meaning to this list, in a feline way.

Not wanting my felines to take over completely my blogging experiences (although they are on their way) I decided to make a list of things I wished I had achieved in my life up to now, but time is running out, so I very much doubt that I will succeed.

1.      Learn to speak Arabic fluently. Just something fascinating about foreign languages with me. The more complicated they are, the better. I did try this a few years ago, could even write and read arabic to a certain extent, but it is a complicated thing. Where do they speak arabic is the first problem. All those arabic speaking countries have their own patois, dialect. I learnt that the Gulf States and Egypt speak the “high” arabic, and everywhere else has its own way of doing things. So I struck this from the list.

2.       Enter and win the Master Chef cooking competition on the BBC television programme in Great Britain. I enjoy cooking and have noticed that a lot of the dishes cooked in this programme are not foreign to me. The only problem is, according to Mr. Swiss, presentation is very important. No tomato stains on the side of the plate, do not just cook and serve the veg: it has to look like a painting from Van Gogh, and not Picasso. Every dish must be a success, so I decided to forget this.

3.       Become an authority on first aid treatment. I belonged to our local village group for six years, thinking do not ask what your village can do for you, but what you can do for your village (I think this quote has already been made by some American President). Anyhow I did learn a lot, but noticed with time that when I went down on my knees on the floor to come to the help of an injured, or sick person, I could not get up again without help from my colleagues. Yes the body fails with age now and again. Eventually I served the group for many years as accountant, as I was the only member that actually knew how to use a computer. Medical people are more used to dealing with people than machines.

4.       Win the national lotto. You choose six numbers for the draw which is made twice a week. You have to pay to take part. After a few years I noticed that my win quota was overtaken by the money I was investing in this game of chance, so I decided to put this idea on one side.

5.       Tour the World and meet all those people that you have met in the blogging world. They all have such strange names, but behind the camouflage there must be something known as flesh and blood.

6.       Play jazz piano like Art Tatum, Paolo Conte, Theolonius Monk, Erroll Garner, even Fats Waller. After 12 years of piano lessons, I still have to have notes in front of me to play. I learnt classical piano, but would love to play jazz, not having to rely on the notes, but on my feelings.

7.       Live in a large house with an even larger garden and have a cat paradise in my garden where I could adopt cats galore, let them run around. Mr. Swiss finds three cats is the limit, but I long for the day when a lost kitten comes scratching at my door saying “look after me”. “What did you say Nera feline. No, that will not work, you are not prepared to share your food with a further hungry feline mouth”. Ok, strike this from the list, the cats that own me are not in agreement.

8.       Have a cleaning lady and gardener. I could then just do my own thing like blogging, reading, making trips to other towns and countries, and would not have to clean that stupid bathroom, kitchen, shower or do back breaking jobs in the garden. Mr. Swiss finds, however, that since I am retired I do not really have so much to do any more, so I would have the time. He added he does half of it in any case – true, so another one to strike from the list.

9.       Learn to ride a bycycle. A life’s dream (have already blogged about this). It is all a question of balance it seems. I see myself cycling into town, my hair wafting in the wind (yes, ok, it is only a two inch cut, but I can dream on).

10.   Get a book published, the trouble being I have not yet written this book. I had a go once, got it published, but it was self publishing. This time I want to be discovered, win the Pulitzer Price or perhaps even the Nobel prize, I am not fussy, any prize will do. I might one day even become Blogger of the year.

And now to discover how to put a list format into a blog - could be point 11.