There are days when the to-do list seems to ‘spiral out of control’ (to channel the relevant cliché) as task after task, job after job, add themselves willy-nilly to the total, and with every new addition, priorities get jumbled and it’s ever harder to work out just where it would be best to start.

Such a day is today. It’s been rainy and a bit cool in the last few days, but this morning was fresh, clear and sparkly with sunshine. On stepping outside, the benevolent rays caressed the wrinkly epidermis with warmth and carcinogenic UV emissions.

So making a list seems a good idea. It formalises what’s to do by setting it out in black and white, maybe giving each job a number. Crossing them off as they’re finished is very satisfying – and usefully draws the focus to the next agenda item. So here we go:

• Finish that pesky birdfeeder. Leonardo da Vinci said that a great work of art is never finished – it’s just abandoned. You just call time on when you choose to release it to the world. Thus it is with the scrapwood birdfeeder – why did I ever commit to putting finials on the damn thing? In the meantime, I’ve been setting out a few tasty sunflower seeds in the spot where I think it may be situated – a bit like a pre-launch advertising campaign: ‘Coming soon! Organic seed bar! Sample our tasty wares!’

• Speaking of launching, a dear old friend whose best man I was many years ago, launched a book on constitutional law today – and I was there through the wonders of Zoom. So an hour or so online watching this was a mixture of nostalgia and admiration – it’s great when your old friends do well.
• Weeding, planting, mulching: this riot of life that is spring requires huge commitment from we custodians of the land. It’s a balancing act: putting in what we want to thrive and taking out what we’re less keen on. So – there’s a mass of planting and weeding to be done, and then mulching, which I’m told improves the soil while also discouraging the weeds. Two big bags of mulch sit ready for scattering. They just require an energetic hour or two of dishing out.

• Do some promoting for the business. Amazingly, companies aren’t clamouring for an unemployed freelance writer to do their ‘content marketing’. I can write about financial services, technology, financial services technology, and interior design – reasonable rates, no job too small. Hit me up!
• Call the council about why they keep cutting off our water without warning.
• Recce some good cycling routes. There’s a reasonably flat 35-k one in the Araluen Valley I’m keen to try.
• Photograph the blue-tongued lizard who lives under the deck. I’m dead keen to get a shot of the tongue – is it really blue?

• Our tame magpie has been showing a little too much interest in this reptile – if these guys really have green blood, I don’t want to find out from a dramatic circle-of-life bird-on-reptile confrontation.

Mix in picking up the Messerschmitt from the mechanics’, sampling a new coffee place in the morning sunshine, and, some internet rabbitholing, the unemployed freelance writer’s schedule is, like Braidwood gaol, lacking windows.

On the other hand, it’s my observation that the more you have to do, the more you get done. Or to put it another way, when you have very little to do, it tends to take all day. So bring it on – there’s so much waiting to get done around here, a few more tasks will only serve to make sure it all gets done.