There is a rule about to-do lists which my sis taught me – always put something at the top that you have already done.

It makes you feel better, and gets you off to a good start.

There is another rule which I learnt yesterday when there was biblical rain and wind and August was looking a whole lot like November and you are stuck inside.

Write your list of things you should/could/would like to do – not urgent, but would make you feel like you had accomplished something – when the weather is good and/or you feel positive.

So, I slouched and cooked – always a fall back – yesterday, and did little else so didn’t feel I had accomplished anything, yet today when the sun is shining I could write a whole long list.

I am planning to put that list on the fridge door in case it rains again – and this being this year, it could well.

Now I am fine when it is actually November because I am used to finding something to do when you really don’t want to be outside, but in August it has come as an unpleasant surprise.

But here goes – and sorry sis don’t have anything I have done (yet).

Do a Marie Kondo my clothes – that really means clearing a pile of stuff off my bedroom chair, rootling around in drawers to find those bras I never wear and getting rid of them, keeping that dress I promise myself I will get into in a month….., hanging up stuff in order which can mean anything from dresses to jackets or colour coding or actually pretty much anything which will keep me amused for an afternoon of pouring rain.

Downsize something – one of these fine days we will have to move out of our house which though is only 2 1/2 bedrooms has a cellar, two garages and a loft – stuff has to go.

Knobs and cutlery – we have brass knobs on our doors and they only get polished just before we have a lot of people for lunch sometime in December. I could do an August version…. We have old cutlery gathered from flea markets over the years and which do not do well in a dishwasher. Assuming you do have cutlery which is nightly stashed in the dishwasher, you will not be aware that old fork prongs get stained by eating eggs. Yes, there are sometimes when we eat egg and chips. If you get them immediately into hot and soapy water, that should work but hey ho, we don’t. So they get stained/need cleaning.

Find something to cook with whatever spice/mix you bought for that recipe you saw, did once and now can’t remember – just before it goes out of date. 

Clear out the freezer – remind yourself how nice it was to have your niece do that for you when she was young and would create an excel spreadsheet of what was where. Now, just get the food on shelves and get rid of that stuff in small bags that you knew at the time would come in useful, but now you have no idea what it is or when it was out there.

Decide to be a better person – find something to learn to stave off dementia, for example. Make resolutions about, well anything. Actually, that happens all the time – I am always deciding to be a better person but deciding is not actually doing.

Clean the skirting boards – now this is something that a dog-walking friend of mine does when she is bored. Mind you she is a cleaner so the house will have been done from top to bottom before she gets to that. I have to say, only in lockdown did I ever think, ‘Oh, what shall I do today? The skirting boards might need a once over.’

Write something – well I did yesterday but that was about Naval mutinies based on a book which came into the shop and really, you have to be in for the long haul if you read that.

I am sure there are many other things I could add to the list but next time it is a rainy weekend, I might well just do something from the list.