shewhomust | Crossing items off a list of everything

In ten days' time we will be off on our travels. Now that we have made all the bookings, it's time to think of what we need to do before we go, both preparations for the trip and things to be done at home. I haven't written a list - perhaps I should: recharge electrical things, clean boots, recharge more electrical things - but I still have the sense of crossing off the completed tasks. It's the less stressful form of list-making, all the achievement of tasks accom[lished and crossed off, none of the angst of listed items still to do. Less stressful right up to the point when I have to deal with the things I have left undone.

But that's not yet. On Friday we defrosted the fridge - yes, for reasons which I have explained elsewhere, it really does take all day - and on Saturday we did a big supermarket shop and filled it up again. The clearing of the little upstairs room has been declared complete: there are two photographic enlargers and the monitor from - I'm not sure, but it might be the Commodore 64 - still in there, but we have freecycled a roll of lino, recycled many random pieces of wood, vacuumed the floor and declared a moritorium, and each time I come upstairs, I bring a box of archive with me. The chest containing the towel supply has reappeared from behind the Great Wall of Archive (in the nick of time).

I have typed up the minutes of the neighbourhood association, and placed the month's order for comics for myself and my partner-in-comics, two simple administrative tasks it's always a relief to get out of the way.

I have been to see the exhibition at the Oriental Museum, which they are billing as "Beyond the Great Wave: Hokusai, book illustration and the origins of manga" - that's rather an opportunist structure to place on the fact that one of Hokusai's many books of illustrations is known as Hokusai Manga, and the exhibition consists of maybe a dozen books in glass cases. But I never mind visiting the museum, and it made a pleasant walk there, and then on to the Botanic Gardens, where the daffodils are in full cry - as they are everywhere at the moment. So that was yesterday's walk, all bright sunshine close up, and misty distances: