Oi! Dick'ead!

Just heard a builder with the thickest cockney accent yelling up to a co-worker on some scaffolding.

"Oi! Dick'ead! I got you a flapjack! It's organic!"

Roots

They've pulled up a large section of paving slabs near where I live, uncovering the lattice of surface roots from the nearby trees. It looks pretty, but at the same time somehow raw and painful, like a flayed body exposing its network of veins and arteries.

Cheese 1 - morbier

Being utterly skint until payday at the end of the week, my first cheese was selected through a simple choice between cheese I couldn't afford to buy and cheese I already had in the fridge.

It's a softish cheese. Not as hard as a cheddar, but not as squidgy as brie, with a layer of ash through the middle. Light but tangy. You know, cheese-like, after the fashion of cheese.

Who bloody suggested this cheese lark? Much as I enjoy eating the stuff, do I really have to review them all? Won't a list be sufficient? It must be painfully obvious already that I have no idea what I'm talking about, and no lexicon of cheese-tasting terminology. This is going to be a really long year for you, of reading my inane lactic burblings.

The results are in

You lot are weird, that's all I can say. Here, therefore, is the rather peculiar list of things you have selected for me to do this year:

Make a stop motion film with taxidermy animals - First step, get all my mutant ducklings back from my friend. Second step, hunt down that music from Benny Hill. Third step, find out how the hell to make a stop motion film.

Learn to pick locks - I have a vague memory of an email sent to me years ago which mentioned a place where it is possible to learn this. I am already following that lead, like a bassett hound.

Every morning look in the mirror and tell myself "Meg, you are beautiful. You have many people who love you, and I love you too" - Did it this morning. Felt like a dick.

Design and fabricate a piece of furniture - Maybe a footstool or pouffe of some description. That sounds easyish.

Make a great hat out of underpants - What is wrong with you people? Why would you do this to me?

Run through a field naked - Again, why would you do this to me? Have you seen me naked? That is not a body made for running without significant support. It has been pointed out that I will be at a wedding on a farm in the summer, so that will probably be the place where I end up giving myself two black eyes and twisting my ankle in a rabbit hole.

Go a week without wearing make up - This is actually the scariest one of all. Apart from at Burning Man and Nowhere, where I feel fairly secure, I haven't voluntarily left the house without make up since I was a young teenager.

Learn mindful meditation - I've been hearing a lot about this lately. A number of people (and not just woowoo hippies) have reported finding it very good for mental health problems, so I'll be interested to see how this goes.

Eat a food I’ve been afraid of trying - My immediate thought is soft shell crab. I'm always put off by foodstuffs which involve eating an animal's innards and bones - like whitebait - but soft shell crabs also look like deep fried spiders. Bleurgh! Anyone know where they do good ones in London?

Try a new cheese every week for the year - I'm going to need to find some little cheese shop somewhere. Am I limited only to cheeses I've never eaten before? Must seek clarification from the suggestor, but I'm looking forward to this one!

Vote now

Alrighty then! My quest for bucket list suggestions has come up with 20 items. I am listing these below. Please comment, email me, fb me or send a carrier pigeon* with your three votes, and I will do the top ten this year.

Do a 10-day Vipassana silent retreat
Go a week without wearing make-up
Learn to make a hat
Make a great hat out of underpants
Learn Kung Fu
Learn to pick locks
Knit a pixie hood
Learn parkour
Make pasta
Design and fabricate a piece of furniture
Run through a field naked
Eat a food I’ve been afraid of trying
Go up in a glider
Join Gothic Valley WI
Learn mindful meditation
Try a new cheese every week (I will add ‘for a year’ to make it a goal)
Every morning for a year, look in the mirror and say out loud “Meg, you are beautiful. You have many people who love you and I love you too”
Organise and run a project at Burning Pub
Make a stop motion film with taxidermy animals
Write a comic

*late additions*
Hunt, kill, butcher and eat an animal
Take up yoga for six months

If you desperately want to add another item, tell me and I'll put it in as a late entry.

*No, I won't stuff your pigeon. Probably.

Change

A lot of the things I removed from the bucket list were cut for being too difficult to pin down. Actions such as forgiveness and acceptance for example. How would I really know if I had ticked them off? After all, I know how capricious I am. I might think I've forgiven someone, then three years down the line they'll say one little thing and I'll be furious with them all over again. So all those items had to go.

But the biggest cut was the line that read 'adopt a child'. At the time when I started writing this list, I was pretty young, and yet already aware that I didn't feel any great biological urge to pass on my genes. And so the logical conclusion at that time was that, when I decided to start a family, I would give a home to a kid who needed it rather than making one from scratch.

Fast forward eight years, and it has become clear that the conclusion may have been incorrect. It's not just that I don't feel the need to further my genetic line, I simply don't feel that I want children. Who knows, maybe that will change in the future. Maybe I'll meet someone special and want to raise 'our' child, or maybe some ticking time bomb of hormones will explode and I'll suddenly become desperately broody - I am approaching 30, so it's a dangerous age - but as time goes on it looks increasingly unlikely.

It's a surprisingly difficult thing to tell people. Despite the advances of feminism, it is still built into the make up of our society that the great aim of womanhood is to become a mother. People think you must be a real hard-nosed, unfeminine, kid-hating bitch if you don't want that for yourself. And I'm no kid-hater. I like most children (not all. I'm sorry, but some kids are arseholes, just like some grown-ups). I love my little nieces more than anything, but I also like giving them back to their parents. For one thing, I know I couldn't do anything even close to the amazing job my brother and sister-in-law do at raising sproglets, but mostly, I just like my life the way it is. And so the item had to go.

P.S. If it's 20 years from now and you are my kid reading this, please don't think you aren't wanted. Just think how much I must have wanted you to change my mind.

Updated bucket list - and new project for you to help with

101 Things to do before I die - an updated list with some changes.

1. Learn to blow smoke rings
2. Throw a drink over someone
3. See the Aurora Borealis
4. Have dinner at the Fat Duck
5. See a glacier
6. Have my photo taken nude and like the result
7. Finish my book and have it published
8. Give 50 pounds to a busker
9. Go scuba diving
10. *Try an oyster*
11. Become fluent in another language
12. Swim with sharks
13. *Go to a Pride parade*
14. Take a ride in a hot air balloon
15. *Write a script*
16. Learn to drive
17. Skydive
18. Eat something I've grown myself
19. Learn to juggle
20. *Go to Torture Garden*
21. Volunteer at Burning Man
22. Wallpaper a room
23. Read every book listed in ‘1001 books you must read before you die’ 
24. Learn sign language
25. Own a bath big enough for two
26. *Smash a plate on purpose*
27. Send a message in a bottle
28. Have a library room in my house
29. Own a snake
30. Stay in the ice hotel
31. *Try caviar*
32. *Ask someone on a date*
33. *Stop having to order enough takeaway that they won’t realize I’m eating alone*
34. *Learn to knit*
35. Fly first class
36. *Start a blog*
37. Go a year without forgetting a single relative’s birthday
38. Live in another country for a year
39. Learn to salsa
40. *Get a degree*
41. Get a masters degree
42. Get a doctorate
43. Send a hand-written letter
44. Make jam
45. Visit the pyramids
46. *Give a dinner party*
47. Go white water rafting
48. Learn to cry on cue
49. Have a food fight
50. Be debt free 
51. See a manatee
52. Go into space (and take my dad with me)
53. *Have afternoon tea*
54. Work in a job that I love
55. Hold a koala
56. Complete the Times cryptic crossword without help
57. Go skiing
58. Spend 24 hours solid in a pub
59. Go to the Galapagos islands
60. *Mudlark on the banks of the Thames at low tide*
61. *Get a massage*
62. *Own a stuffed animal (taxidermy, not a teddy)*
63. Go to Mardi Gras
64. Take singing lessons
65. Go to a shop and try on wedding dresses a la Muriel
66. Learn to spin fire poi
67. Celebrate the Day of the Dead in Mexico
68. *Change somebody’s life for the better*
69. Hitchhike
70. Kiss underwater
71. Learn to play poker
72. Go to an airport and get on the next available flight, regardless of destination
73. Stand on the equator
74. Swim with bioluminescent plankton in Puerto Rico
75. Take a holiday on a canal boat with friends
76. Have enough cats to cross the line from ‘cat-lover’ to ‘crazy cat lady’
77. Find the perfect bra
78. Visit the Sistine chapel
79. Do a cartwheel
80. Give somebody flowers for no reason
81. Go to Iceland
82. Learn to ride a motorbike
83. *Be kissed under mistletoe*
84. Become a regular in a pub and have a ‘usual’
85. Learn the proper use of English grammar
86. Deliver a crushing comeback when insulted instead of gaping in disbelief like a stunned trout
87. Write a love letter
88. See penguins in the wild
89. Run (or more likely walk) the London marathon
90. Take a picture every day for a year
91. *Go to Glastonbury festival*
92. Take horse riding lessons
93. Organise a grown-up sleepover 
94. Put on pyjamas, get into a show bed in a shop and see how long it takes to get chucked out
95. Busk
96. Travel on the Orient Express
97. Live independently for a whole year
98. Couchsurf
99. Do stand-up
100. Write my will
101. Do ten things somebody else thinks I should do

Note number 101. I am now taking suggestions. It could be something that you think I would enjoy, or something you think it is important I learn or experience. Please make it specific to me, not too expensive (unless you're paying!) and make it something that can be resolutely ticked off.

Resolutions

1) Grow back my missing half eyebrow.

2) Never again use glue to attach masks to my eyebrow regions.