Several of my habits that annoy me (God alone knows how the family
feels, I have never dared ask) involve: checking to make sure I have the front door key on my person only after I have carefully shut the front door behind me; being apparently unable to eat any meal without throwing food all over myself and making too many shopping lists.
As I write, my desk is upholstered in a million yellow sticky notes of differing sizes, several saying "Bread!" - all with the Lionel Bart Memorial Exclamation Mark as though the helpful punctuation will assist my fading memory (this patently not the case, else why would there be four of them and no bread in the house?) and some with loopy hieroglyphs I shall never be able to read - "Rosetta Stone Found Abandoned Near Frozen Peas".
I think it's because I'm too organised. I keep a pad and pen in the kitchen to jot things down as I remember them. I keep one by the sofa in case I think of something during an evening's television viewing (the most violent of scenes is only likely to impinge on my consciousness enough to make me remember to write 'tomato puree' on something); there's yet another on the bedside table and the study has more jaundice-coloured notelets in it than W H Smith – and therein lies the problem.
Ours is a tall house and it is seldom I can be bothered to flog up to the top of it to collect the bedroom selection. The ones in the kitchen, several days old now and covered in assorted culinary gack, are too revolting to be allowed out and the one in the sitting-room says "Don't forget to....surely they can't show that before the watershed????"
Occasionally, I ask one of my men to get something when they're out and about. It has to be desperate before I ask Oli since, like any self-respecting teenager, he won't involve himself in any transaction without incalculable amounts of bartering. "So let me see if I've got this right. You'll pop down to the shops and pick
yourself up some pizza because you don't fancy Boeuf en Daube tonight and for doing it you want not to have to tidy your room, you need £5 for a haircut and can you have a sleepover at the weekend?"
My husband's take on shopping is completely different - although much more in my favour, it has to be said. There was a Fast Show incident here a couple of weeks ago when I asked him to bring some milk in and he came home with a new TV, a video recorder and a DVD player. No milk, obviously, but who cares? It only cost £20 for a new tee-shirt, a note to teacher saying "Oliver may not play games he has just gelled his hair" and before another three hours had passed we had a pint of milk, six bags of popcorn and a kilo of milk chocolate in the house. Bargain.
The thing to do is make a fresh list. "Bread!" goes on straight away, because it's obviously weeks since we've had any...the other vital components of a properly-maintained establishment get scribbled down, then I write it all out again so I can read the bloody thing, then I remember that I have recently been bought a Palm Pilot, so spend a couple of hours using the stylus to write "Persil, kitchen rolls, celery" and only then notice that I have written myself a memo reminding me to pick up "Fursip, jisspft and s4rkv". Eventually, however, the semblance of a proper shopping list has been committed to one piece of paper, the vital reminder to call the surgery for a repeat prescription for Prozac has been written on notes left on every floor of the house and I am ready to do battle.
You'll always spot me in Waitrose. I'll be the one in the pleated skirt, sobbing quietly against the porcini-flavoured pasta quills wondering what the hell I'm there for.
Because the other irritating habit I have is always forgetting to take the effing shopping list with me.
