I am stepping into the shoes of my great grandfather, former horticulturalist who studied at Kew Gardens. Here is my first work of art: my first time cutting the grass in my backyard. And a bit more than that too!!
All was quiet after I mowed over the cord!! Guess that’s what you get with an electric mower!
5th January: Day 84 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.
I made a big decision.
I decided to jump ship.
This story might give you some ideas of why:
The Tale of Mary Poppins & Her Bulimic Cat
Once Mary Poppins finally freed herself of children and chimney sweeps in central London, she moved out to Kew Gardens to become a haggard woman of thirty-four years. She soon found herself bored, so she began taking on lodgers, to whip them into shape and teach them how to clean up their toys. The six month induction process included constant teaching and corrections. Her trademark dust-check was employed, with a brush against the bathroom molding and distinctive rub of the index finger and thumb pads. The spoonful of sugar she delivered came baked in brownies under the guise of being a chef, to counteract statements that slipped from her mouth like, “The bottom line is that this is my flat”, the defensive / interrogational looks she had on her face every time she arrived home and found her lodger daring to use her one and only, and oh-so-beloved kitchen, and moreover, the elated look that came over her face every time she heard that her lodger had to travel for work. But despite the brownies, she ran a tight ship (luckily without the hourly cannon blasts), endeavoring to lower her lodger’s water consumption by forbidding the pre-washing of dishes before the dishwasher, making her let it mellow when it’s yellow and cutting off washing machine and shower usage after 11 pm.
When Mary wasn’t focusing on ways to make her lodger feel like she was renting a room, not living in a home, she was wholly devoted to her cat, Harry, and his various eating issues. It all began with Harry’s nibbling food in secrecy. Mary was a bit alarmed, but carried on by whipping up some delicious frosting and covering up the nibble marks before serving it to her friends. It became more serious, though, when Harry’s BMI moved from overweight to obese. Mary was very cross. She targeted those responsible: everyone but herself. Posting signs at the front of the building, she gave Harry a voice that said, “Please stop feeding me. The Doctor says I’m fat”. But as the nasty big black thing became the nasty little black thing, the incessant begging became worse. Harry moved on to bulimia, evidenced by the ubiquitous trails on the carpet from his frequent purges. Mary addressed this by decreasing the rations to gastric-bypass-like mini portions but it turned out Harry quite liked emptying his stomach on Mary’s duvet…
Finally one day the lodger came to her senses and decided that extending her commute to Wimbledon (otherwise known by J as the end of the world) would be a good exchange for enduring the likes of Mary and Harry.
And so the packing began…
26th October: Day 14 of doing one thing as if I was living that day as my last.
It’s been two weeks of this little experiment and it’s surprisingly harder than I thought! Perhaps that’s because my initial impression of living a day as the last was that I would chuck out my agenda and do big, exciting things…. like the things my colleagues thought of for an incentive trip for a bunch of been there-done that’s. Their bucket lists included: ice rally driving in cars with spiked wheels in Scandinavia, skiddo riding, reindeer herding, wakeboarding off of the coast of Greece, tall ship racing, helicoptering a plane to the top of the Alps to then skydive or parasail off, experiencing zero gravity, chartering a submarine, driving a Formula1 car, breaking the sound barrier, flying above the stratosphere, firewalking and finally, seeing the northern lights.
But since I’m a bit tied down with the whole work thing, I expected that I’d be doing little or medium things each day that would scare and delight me, and make me live a little bit bigger. The red thread that connects these little and bigger acts is far from a neat little string. In actuality, it’s more like a giant gnarled rope that brings together my desires to overcome fears with reckless abandon, to allow myself to enjoy the moment through indulgence, to push myself to experience something I wouldn’t have normally encountered, to pour myself out to others and give in ways I may not have… but as I rack my brain each day, I’m realizing that I already live big… and a lot of the things I already do would be things I would want to do if I were living this day as my last.
So with that spirit, on Sunday, I peeled off my biking clothes that were soaking with rain from my 15 mile bike ride, and decided that while the Diwali festival in Trafalgar Square sounded amazing, snuggling up in bed sounded a lot better. And so that is what I did.
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