“You’re not going to believe this,” I am staring at the screen of my phone, talking to anyone who is nearby, which must surely be someone. I don’t live in a castle.
“It’s going to be dry again tomorrow. Do you know what that means?”
Nobody answers, because nobody is there.
“It means laundry zero.”
‘The journey to inbox zero starts with deleting emails…’ I read as I scan a list of search results for ‘inbox zero’, the productivity ‘hack’ where people aim to entirely empty their email inboxes - mainly, it seems, by just deleting all their email. I’m not clear on how having no email means you’re more productive, but I’m willing to allow that I may not be the expert on this.
“You absolutely need to put in the subject line: ‘Tim, do not delete this,’” someone called Tim told me once, “or else I will just delete it.”
I duly sent him an email with the subject line: “Tim, do not delete this,” and never got a response. “I bet he deleted it,” I thought.
“How can people get away with just deleting email?” I ask my wife, she doesn’t answer, because she’s concentrating on clearing her inbox.
“I had six emails in here yesterday,” she says, “and now there’s 84.”
I look at my inbox, fume internally about Tim, and then go and look at the laundry again.
“Perhaps I should just delete some clothes,” I mutter.
“If you do, then delete your own,” the youngest says.
“Oh yeah! You hear that!” I yell. Nobody answers, because nobody is there.
Apart from inbox zero, other productivity ‘hacks’ include visualising success, according to experts doing this helps you achieve it. I have some respect for this idea, having used it to some limited success, with running. I visualised going for a run, and then I went for a run. Then I told myself that having visualised it helped. On reflection, perhaps it wasn’t as helpful as I thought.
Nevertheless, I close my eyes and visualise an empty laundry basket. I picture a sunny day, a light wind gently billowing a duvet cover, a pair of jeans swinging from the line with a carefree nonchalance. Long tailed tits flit around in a tree nearby like fluffy lolly pops, bees buzz in the borage. Somewhere in the distance: the sound of laughter. ‘Bliss…’ I thought.
Cometh the hour, cometh the man, as someone once said - possibly a politician, possibly a cricketer, possibly Plutarch - nobody seems to know. But the hour arrived and there I was, staring at the bottom of the laundry basket for the first time in ages. The wet weather that has been an almost constant fixture since October last year has made laundry zero hard to achieve for the last few months, owing to my steadfast determination to dry things on a washing line.
A few minutes later, because I am passing, I revisit the scene of my triumph. Somehow, though, the laundry basket has been replenished. Laundry zero was fleeting. “Gone too soon,” I think, mournfully. Just as nature abhors a vacuum, so laundry baskets dislike being empty. Outside the clouds obscure the sun, and a pigeon flops heavily on to the ground. A wasp crawls up the window. In the distance the sound of an argument…
“I might have another go at emailing Tim,” I think.
‘Saturday columns’ are short, (relatively) funny, basically true* stories of mundanity and mishaps from my life. There’s not supposed to be any point to them. But they might make you smile. Bear with me if I don’t manage every Saturday, I’m working on it.
*Some names, locations and other details may have been changed to protect the guilty.