At the beginning of June Noreen and I had two weeks holiday (well time off work anyway). For a variety of reasons, not least that we couldn’t get anyone to feed the cats, not even our local cattery, we didn’t go away. As always we intended to have lots of days out but due to basic knackeration and idleness we failed. So here is what I did done on my holidays …

• Took lots of photographs of the garden and especially the roses
• Supervised the gardener reconstructing the compost heaps
• Got a boot-load of old stuff (dead printers, garden shredder) taken to the tip
• Proofread Anthony Powell Society quarterly Newsletter and sent it to printer
• Paid loads of bills
• Turned out the toot from our wardrobes and threw out a load of old shoes, underwear, etc.
• Reviewed the draft new Anthony Powell Society website (still under development at the time of writing)
• Got a haircut
• Tidied up my PC hard disk
• Photoshopped lots of photos and posted them to Flickr
• Caught up on the pile of magazines to read by the bed
• Had some extra sleep
• Cooked lamb curry, vegetable curry and trout & pasta
• Decided not to buy a new bike (‘cos I know I’ll end up not using it, like I didn’t use the last one)
• Attended a charity trustees meeting, and unexpectedly had to chair it
• Went to London Zoo
• Went to the garden centre and bought loads of plants (some acers, a rose, a passion flower, lots of small things) and some terracotta pots for the patio
• Had a major tidy-up and repotted lots of plants on the patio
• Stayed up late but still got up fairly early (at least on some days)
• Had several siestas
• Went to Kew Gardens
• Spent lots of time pottering in the garden
• Got slightly sunburnt
• Wrote several weblog posts
• Had sex, several times
• Totally buggered my sleep pattern and failed to get up early on the days I wanted to (which is why we didn’t have as many away-days as planned)
• Processed a raft of literary society membership renewals and other admin; three afternoons worth!
• Tried to agree what we should do for an autumn holiday – and failed!

Such is the stuff of doing nothing.