Remember to breathe - Tick.

I have worked like a whirling dervish today. 'In' piles bearing the dust of centuries, have become crisp 'out' piles of post. I love productive days like this. To kick start my whirling dervish activities, I put on a tall hat and a long coat and spun my way over to the barn where I composed a long list of things that I have to get done this week. The list has ruled my day and no deviation from it is allowed. I'm strict with myself on things like that. However, I do have some sneaky tactics that I use when making lists.

The thing with lists is to put EVERYTHING onto them in order to get a really good sense of achievement by being able to cross them off. Start with 'go to office'. Excellent - I have arrived in the office and already can tick something off. Hurrah. Carry on with list by adding on the the various tiresome work related things for clients, remembering to breathe, eating lunch, talking to the loyal hound, checking the blog, writing lists etc etc. All too soon, I have an overwhelmingly long list but a list that I can instantly put checks against.

Reviewing it now, I can confirm that I have eaten lunch, remembered to breathe, and what's more done enormous amounts of work. There is a huge pile of post next to me ready to go to the post office tomorrow. My books are balanced (Georgette Heyer on top of Peter Ho Davies since you asked) and my e mails and phone calls are replied to. I have placed orders and paid bills and given my parents coffee when they did a drive by with some bags of coal and an apple tree for me (what can I say, they go shopping in odd places).

All this gives me a glowing feel of satisfaction and the perfect justification to go and meet a friend at a nearby reservoir and take the loyal hound for a walk while I pick blackberries. I am going to make blackberry whisky tonight.

I think I'll put going for a walk and make blackberry whisky on my list, then I can tick them off tomorrow morning.......

Thank you SO much......

Why is it that I have such difficulty with thank you letters? It should be the easiest thing in the world. You go to a something, organised by somebody, and the next day you sit down with your crisp notepaper and inkpen and dash of a charming and sincere note to express your appreciation. Or so it goes in Georgette Heyer country, and in my optimistic pea like mind.

Unfortunately, in my real world it works rather differently. Before I go to a party / dinner / whatever, I start planning miraculous thank you letters. Letters that will be framed and oohed and aahed over by future generations for their wit and turn of phrase. Then I go to said event. Wake up next morning with hangover and good intentions to get said letter written that week. As at this stage I have plenty of time and will still appear efficient and well brought up if I get something in the post in the next five days or so, I linger over actually starting. I plan some opening phrases, I wonder if I need a new pen. I go off and do something else entirely........

Three weeks later, I realise to my horror that I have done nothing about it. Not one letter of the alphabet has made it onto my non existent note paper. I've even forgotten all the things I had planned before the party to say in my letter. This is a critical mass point. If I don't write this very second, then the letter really is going to have to be fantastic to make up for its revolting lateness. It is imperative that the moment I become aware of my failure to write I go out and shoot a goose if necessary in order to get myself a quill so that I can write the wretched letter. I go off and do something else entirely.......

Usually around SIX WEEKS after the actual event I wake up sweating in the middle of the night aware that people are talking about that horrible girl who never writes thank you letters. My name is being bandied across supermarket aisles as 'the one who can't be bothered to write'. I shall never be asked to anything again, never looked in the eye again, possibly never even spoken to again. I must write.

At this point, usually something happens. I will find writing paper, and inappropriately coloured pens. I'll start several letters but will feel all of them are inadequate to the task of making a letter that is six weeks late (seven or eight weeks by the time Royal Mail has lost it) look good. In the end I write a paltry letter which I backdate by a couple of weeks and then add a postscript saying that 'to my horror I just found it in a pile of paperwork and had obviously failed to send it blah blah blah'. I once famously wrote that I had been abducted by aliens hence my inability to write. I have officially become desperate.

It's ridiculous. It shouldn't be this hard to just sit down the very next day and write the letter, take it to the postbox and send it. In reality, it would be better to write a postcard than to fail to write a letter which, when it finally makes it in the post, is going to be so late that the host doesn't remember throwing the party, or having you to stay, or possibly who you are.

I know, lots of people don't write. They will think this post is insane and that possibly I am a fictional character living a strange life of thank you letters and 'at home' mornings. But everybody knows how nice it is to get a letter, that somebody has taken the trouble to tell you that they appreciated what you did for them. How nice is it when you deal the post out on the kitchen table and in amongst the junk and the bills, is a handwritten envelope. You always open that first.

I guess it would be even nicer if the event they were thanking you for actually happened this millenium. I must go; I have thank you letters to write.