Life

Nuala McCann: Writing lists is in my genes – it's something I get from my mother

My sister fell about laughing when she lifted one such mother’s list which ended with: 'Sew velvet covers for the cutlery.' It’s Ballymena not Downton Abbey, we said

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann

Nuala McCann is an Irish News columnist and writes a weekly radio review.

Milk, bread, wash baby elephant, tackle elephant in the room...
Milk, bread, wash baby elephant, tackle elephant in the room... Milk, bread, wash baby elephant, tackle elephant in the room...

LIST making is in my genes. Long before yellow post-its, I was filling the back of old bus tickets with 'to do' and 'to be' lists... do be, do be, doo. That’s an old Frank Sinatra joke.

My lists were never bucket lists. A younger friend has one of those. She has ticked off many exotic adventures – including washing a baby elephant in India. She showed me a photograph. I don’t know which of them enjoyed it more.

I envy her youth and joy and how much she’s packed into her life so far.

My mother’s horizons are narrower but she loves lists... sometimes they go off kilter. They start off sensibly with: “Call Benny the sweep” and end up somewhere bizarre.

Her lists from our childhood were ideals to live by but the reality of a house with six children, a twin tub and an old fashioned mangle, left little time for high falootin ideas.

My sister fell about laughing when she lifted one such mother’s list which ended with: “Sew velvet covers for the cutlery.” It’s Ballymena not Downton Abbey, we said.

My mother has a particular love of Jane Austen and a tiny waist, just right for a crinoline. As she reared her six children, she was perhaps dreaming of a refined world where 'Cook' hove to of an evening bearing a tureen of turtle soup, a pot of rabbit stew and perhaps some calf’s foot jelly.

Then, everyone would sit down in a civilised manner knowing exactly where to start with their 124 pieces of silver cutlery and afterwards the gentlemen would withdraw for cigars as the ladies fluttered their fans and tinkled on the piano.

What she got was six hungry mouths opening and closing like baby birds all gathered round the blue formica table and my father, home at 6pm, clutching his rolled-up newspaper, awaiting his teatime tray to be delivered to his knee just as Scene Around Six kicked off.

We always had a beautiful three course meal on a Sunday around the good table.

But doubtless, in the Jane Austen world, there was no rapt silence as the upside down pineapple cake was placed on the table and no seven pairs of eyes followed the cutter of said cake to ensure that each slice was exactly equal – oh, easy for Leonardo.

The rule in our house was that the person who cut the cake never got to choose which slice he/she was having – so that made the cutter extremely careful to be fair.

Lists followed me into the workplace. After four years spent drinking wine and coffee and talking about Shakespearean tragedy and the tragedy of not getting asked to the May Ball, work came as a shock.

Work where I had to go in 9am to 5pm five days a week and set my own agenda, was even more of a shock. So I made a list every evening and came in to tackle it every morning.

There was always a rotten task that I wanted to shove under the desk – just as I regularly flung my used coffee cups under the bed in student days.

Years later, my friends came over all nostalgic about their secret forays into my bedroom to liberate all the dirty cups, the old bits of toast and the half-eaten hairy sausage. Reader, I was that slut.

It was my big sister who talked to me about lists.

“Your elephant is your big task that you really don’t want to look at,” she advised. “So every morning, start with that and do a little bit, then move on to the list stuff you like to do.”

“It’s work, what if there’s no stuff I LIKE to do,” I cried.

“It’s work,” she echoed with the wisdom of a weary Solomon.

Now, when I’m doing my lists, I remember the elephant and log into my self-assessment tax and my pension and even go online to my bank, because they are forever texting me to say they’ve noticed I haven’t been about recently. Big Brother where art thou?

The same sister, also espouses a very particular book. It’s called SUMO – “Shut Up and Move On”.

She tells me that it is life changing but I secretly think it might be life changing for her because I might truly shut up.

“You’ll love it,” she says.

“Love it? It’s on my Christmas list,” I cry.