Opinion

Anita Robinson: There's nothing like a deadline to spur me into a totally different activity

Get writing!
Get writing! Get writing!

Readers of a certain vintage will recall the old Vere Foster copybooks printed with two narrowly spaced blue lines and two more widely-spaced red ones, above and below.

A small portion of every school day was set apart for practice in ‘linked script’, or what we primary school pupils called “joinedupwritin”.

We scratched and spluttered our way through it with dippy pens and muddy ink, tongues protruding from the corner of our mouths.

What a laborious exercise it was. Too much pressure on the nib and it buckled, or tore the paper. Too little, it blotted.

Few of us achieved a ‘fair, flowing hand’. My most memorable effort was a faultlessly uniform full page repetition of the old adage: ‘Procrastination is the thief of time’. What a pity I rendered ‘thief’ as ‘theif’ throughout.

The phrase turned out to be a prescient personal motto.

Never mind minding my p’s and q’s, I’m fanatical about my ie’s and ei’s, but alas I’m one of life’s natural procrastinators.

I can and will, postpone to the eleventh hour and fifty-ninth minute doing nearly anything. I have an honours degree in prevarication.

The briskly efficient and organised make out ‘to do’ lists and set about them energetically, systematically ticking off each task as it’s completed with a smirk of self-satisfaction.

I make ‘to do’ lists the length of my arm, peruse them with sinking heart, rising dismay and think, “ – not today,” then sit down with a large coffee and read the papers.

Only a deadline, an emergency, or the threat of visitors will galvanise me into resentful activity.

Lest you think I live in squalid chaos, here’s an odd thing. Stuff gets done – eventually – under the heading of ‘displacement activities’. Displacement activities are the random, usually unimportant things one embarks on rather than knuckle down to the immediate and necessary task in hand.

For example, the prospect of preparing an imminent creative writing workshop will drive me to re-organise the hot-press where the towels have been falling out on my head for weeks. Writing a commentary piece for the next morning’s broadcast is put on the long finger while I set about an essential clean-cum-tidy-up for my cleaning lady coming to clean.

An after-dinner speech, a conference talk or lecture (which take days to compose) can, in the absence of relevant ideas, be usefully and pleasantly punctuated by calls to friends, trying on clothes I’ve forgotten about to see if they still fit, studying paint charts with a view to re-doing the kitchen, or looking in the attic for the suddenly remembered lamp we got as a wedding present.

These activities rest the brain and may well prove incidentally inspirational.

Female procrastinators understand and empathise with these often fruitful diversions. Male procrastinators have their own set of delaying tactics.

The Loving Spouse spent thirty years of Saturday afternoons footering about in a two-car garage that hadn’t enough space left in it to accommodate even one. He never got rid of anything, just moved stuff about.

Meanwhile, washers weren’t replaced, pictures weren’t hung and skirting boards didn’t get a second coat.

Did I resent it? Well, that would’ve been a pot-and-kettle calling exercise, since, bless him, his dinner was often a moveable feast and sometimes a trip to the local chippy. Only once did he criticise my chronic incapacity to do things in time. “I don’t know why people spring these things on you at only six months notice”.

In the course of writing this article, I’ve re-potted two ailing cactus plants, wiped the bottoms of the sauce bottles in the kitchen cupboard and de-crumbed the cutlery drawer.

You’ll excuse me for a few minutes while I tack up a skirt with a hanging hem that’s been held up with sellotape for the past six weeks and I might need to wear it tomorrow.

Perhaps the serenity induced by sewing will allow me to think how I can draw this piece to a tidy conclusion. Thank you for waiting….

And there you are – the hem, the column and you Dear Reader, neatly stitched up!