For the first time in a very long while, I made a to-do list. It’s probably one of the seven effective habits of highly turgid people – I’m not sure, I haven’t checked. It was a bit scary at first, having a list. All of the items are things I want to do, like book plane tickets to go to interesting places, and fiddle with the Saab. But the whole list thing just makes me shudder. Without realising it, some subconscious survival mechanism kicked in. It must have evolved during the time that I used to keep to-do lists. It probably kept me sane. This is what happened. I wrote down something that I was just about to do (go pick up my ticket to Flipside), and then crossed it out. Instant gratification. Then the second survival instinct kicked in. By the time I had returned with the ticket in my hand, I had lost the list.