What's in a list?

It being the beginning of what is risibly described as the British summer, I've just got out some summer clothes. In the pocket of the trousers I've put on, I've just fished out a list.

It says:

pizza
fruit
Halfords - seat-back bags
Blockbuster
all-purpose cleaner
wax strips
moisturiser

My God, what a lot of memories lurk behind this innocent little missive! It's holiday time! We're going away very imminently - there's just time for me to wax my legs and assorted other areas of my person, moisturise my flaky wintry body, clean the house (I can't bear coming back to a messy, dirty house), get the pizza and fruit for the last meal before departure (no washing up - no leftovers). And we're going on a long trip with the kids, so we've stocked up on books, comics, cereal bars, drinks, wipes and miscellaneous sundries, and I've seen those bags which drape from the headrest to store them all in. We have to go to the video store, because we've also got ourselves a portable dvd player so that we can travel in relative peace without the inevitable "Are we nearly there yet?" which usually starts one hour into a seventeen hour journey. I smiled as I remembered it all!

My name is Frances and I am a list-maker. There are people who make lists and there are people who don't. Looking about my workstation I can see several scrappy pieces of paper. There is a handwritten list of the best schools in the area, graded according to price, GCSE results and A level results and aggregated to provide the definitive ranking. (My daughter will be starting at one of these schools in 2008 - I really don't need to start yet...!) There is a list of dates which need to be put into the diary and a list of people who need to be added to the contact lists and registered on my mobile. I have a list of CDs and books I want to buy, and one of clothes I need to order for my children. There are lists of Things To Do, shopping lists, thank-you letter lists from the kids' birthdays, a list of the short stories I have written, a list of screenplays I am pitching, a list of publishing and agency contacts, a list of the 'must-do's of dog-training (not doing very well there, am I?) and a list of the calorific contents of the foods I am most addicted to.

But I love coming across these lists - they are such a barometer of where I was at a certain point in my life, on a certain day. And I love it when I come across an abandoned shopping list in the bottom of the shopping trolley I have grabbed in the trolley park. The handwriting, the items, the length of the list give a little glimpse into the life of someone anonymous with whom you have no contact except that you have both touched this little part of their life. It feels somehow voyeuristic, and is the reason I am so careful not to leave my lists behind. And in the same way I occasionally leave out a list which I think shows me in a positive light. (Most are automatically disqualified, as you can imagine...)

When we were moving house and putting old books on new shelves, I came across a 'Schoolgirls' Diary 1964', chronicling a short trip my grandmother made to Hollywood in that year to visit her actor son. It is FULL of lists. And the lists are marvellous! Sights she had to see, people she had met, things to do, presents to buy. It brought her right back to me, and she died in 1980. These little scraps of paper are people's lives laid bare much more baldly than letters or stories or other considered writings.