Sunday, 9th November 2014

I have done very little today. We had planned to visit one of our favourite local tourist attractions; we have developed a collection of destinations whose tickets last for a year, perfect for a financially guilt-free Sunday expedition. This does mean that we go to Leeds Castle more often than is probably rational but, hey, it's a very nice castle. Lovely walks.

As it transpired, though, a night disrupted by slightly unwell children meant that we awoke too late and too slowly to merit any such adventure. By the time my wife and I had performed our pre-bathroom smartphone rituals (Facebook, Guardian, Arseblog, Facebook, Weather App, Facebook, etc.) and then taken turns in a leisurely bath before repeating the smartphone rituals over breakfast, it was what I can only tenuously describe as mid-morning. By this point, the slightly unwell nature of our children had failed to disappear to a convincing degree, which cemented our decision to stay at home.

To a neurotically conscientious person like me, decisions of this nature inevitably provoke a period of intense guilt. On days like these, the anxious obligation I feel to make every day productive clashes with my determination to bloody well relax, as well as my tendency to be a bit lazy. So I end up investing my whole sense of self-worth in menial tasks like emptying the bins. I emptied the ruddy heck out of those bins this morning, yet still, somehow, I was left with the guilty malaise of the unproductive.

After lunch I swept up all of the leaves deposited muddily on our drive by a belatedly determined autumn. My recent lack of similar activity has left me quite unfit, meaning that this task was a strenuous one. Once I had scooped up the mulchy pile which represented the fruit of my labour, and transferred it all into its relevant bin, I had exerted what should have been a satisfying amount of physical effort, as well as completing the kind of seasonal chore beloved of responsible adults throughout middle England.

But I couldn't shake the suspicion that it was all pointless; I'm sure the drive is freshly covered by now with a new selection of dead foliage. And it's not really as if the freshly swept status I had briefly bestowed upon it made it any more successful as a drive anyway.

So I sighed my way irritably to 4pm, when the prospect of watching some football gave my day the nearest it would get to a sense of purpose. While Arsenal disappointed me once more, I was aware of my wife enjoying some flash card fun with our daughters. Our eldest is currently learning to read; she made my wife ecstatic with a proud demonstration of her new powers.

I shared peripherally in this glee and, inspired by my daughter, resolved to impose a legacy on an otherwise wasted day by starting the diary I had been considering for months. Maybe the self-imposed threat of writing about my life will compel me to make it more interesting.