It’s very quiet at home now, Alex and the grandkids have gone back to the lovely sunshine in Barcelona while we are still here with the rain. The kids were very excited to call us yesterday and let us know that they were in their swimming pool in the private park attached to their house. We were watching more heavy rain pouring down at the time.


But things get back to normal very quickly. I am just whiling away a little time sitting in the Garden Room reading another Brendan DuBois novel when I notice Christine has her Pink Black Book out and is busily scribbling what looks like a list of things to do. Now as I have said before I am very pleased that she has embraced the methodology of planning projects using the Black Book technique that I used for many years during my time as a project manager but she has become obsessed with it.


Eventually she stops and decides it’s time to wash some floors. Alex and the kids have been here for four weeks or so and now they have gone we have to spring clean the house! I didn’t realise they were that messy but it seems they must be!


I take the opportunity to look in the Book and sure enough Christine has been planning. Under a heading of Keith is a list which starts with Power Wash the Stone, presumably to get rid of anything left by the sewage after the flooding so that’s OK. Next in the list is Move the Bath, the bath in question is a cast iron one in the garden filled with compost with some shrubs or other growing in it which now needs to sit at the end of the new patio which is next in the list. Lay the Patio it says, that’s eighteen square metres of York Stone to move and set in sand.


Following on the list is: Lay the Lawn: Lay the Gravel Paths: Move the Shed, that’s a different one from the one I moved a few weeks ago, and finishes with Move Hand Basin that’s the one in the new laundry room.


So quite a list but to be fair she has also listed some items under her own name: Make Cushions for Joe’s Room: Prune the Flower Beds and some plants from the garden centre need re-potting. Now it may just be my biased view but my list seems harder and all together more substantial than the one under the heading of Christine.


And what’s more all these jobs have a time next to them and the last one is due for completion before the end of September. September! It can’t be done. What Christine hasn’t appreciated yet is that when planning a project you have to estimate the time required and then double it to make sure you can’t be accused of missing deadlines. These are things you get from experience, the same as always making sure that the IT department carry the can if things go wrong, it’s not too hard as everyone believes most things are their fault anyway.


I wonder if this is time to scrap the planning and get the Pink Black Book into the dustbin, I can always make out she has misplaced it, she is getting on a bit her memory's not what it was!


What I want to know is what ever happened to retirement, I’m supposed to be taking life easy and wondering what to fill my days with. Whatever happened to the ‘I’ days? What about the golf and bowling, the walking on the moors with lunch down the pub. I’ve even been shopping in Tescos with Christine today; she seems to have forgotten that some months ago she banned me from this.


I decide to get on the lap top, I have the site for Jet2.com bookmarked, time to book the next flights to Barcelona I think. August seems a good month to be out there. I get another beer out of the fridge better get in training for the Bodega