I look back at my school days now in awe at my total lack of awareness, one in which I drifted into a comatosed state for the vast majority of it.

Claire regularly accuses me of being too easily distracted and in so doing I have a habit of forgetting what I was meant to be doing in the first place.
She is, of course, quite correct in that my mind is continuously doing it's own thing whilst the logic side is battling against it to get some specific objective completed. Frankly it literally has a mind of its own.

I'll start off with the objective of making the guests bed up and this requires me to iron the Duvet cover so off I trot to get the broom. Why, you may ask, do I need a broom to do the ironing? Well the Duvet is super-king size and will drag on the floor when I iron it. So I set up the ironing board right next to our very large dining table which enables me to lay the cover right across the table and then over the ironing board. Then I can iron it with some reasonable level of manageability allowing the ironed cover to drape a little onto the floor. So obviously the floor has to be clean and as it is a tiled floor I naturally sweep it first.
The broom is in the porch at the back of the house and whilst in there I notice that the small tub we have for composting items is nearly full and needs emptying so I pick it up and take it out to the compost bins. Now on the way back I go past the wood pile which reminds me that the fire needs making up before the guests arrive and so I collect as many as I can (without the wood basket) and head off to make the fire up. Having got the wood to the fire I realise that I'll need some paper to make up the base and so I dump the wood in front of the fire place and head off to get some.

The paper is in the porch and whilst there (having now completely forgotten about the initial trip to get the broom) I notice that the cat litter tray could do with emptying and so proceed to do so taking the next ten minutes to clear it then hose it down in the back-garden. Whilst I'm hosing it down I happen to look up and observe that the bird feeders are almost empty and so I now head off to get the seeds with an aim to top them up. The seeds are kept in the conservatory (which is, as it happens, where the Duvet cover hangs patiently awaiting it's date with an iron) so totally ignoring the creased duvet cover and as it happens the poor hungry little birds too, I forget all about the seeds because I have just noticed my cross headed screw driver which reminded me that the top tread on the stairs needed screwing down so I pick it up and head off to do the deed.

Having accomplished this little chore I decide to return the screw driver to the tool kit in the garage and off I go with the said tool in me hand. Of course I never get there, no, I need to stop and freshen up the flowers in the vase that are displayed on route. Oh and whilst I'm doing one vase, I might as well do the others and I head up stairs to get the ones out of the guest bedroom. It is somewhere around the point that I am in the room and happen to have a brief look at the bed that I finally remembered that I am supposed to be ironing the duvet cover!

So back down stairs I trek and head off back to the porch to get the broom, again. Well whilst there I couldn't help but notice that the recycling bin needed emptying and so once again off I march.......



You see I just can't concentrate on one thing at a time. They say that women can multi-task and men are really poor at it, well I seem to have landed on the other extreme in which I am multitasking so much that I am utterly clueless as to what the actual objective was in the first place.

This is not an age thing. No I was just as bad as a kid. My mum would walk down the garden path with me to the street where she would wave me off watching me the whole quarter of a mile that I had to walk, as a 9yr old, before I turned the corner heading for my Junior school.
She would see me stop and stroke a cat, then a few yards further I'd stop and stroke another, then another or I might investigate a bush covered in caterpillars, slipping a few into my satchel to play with later.

The point is my mind wanders.

 The hell can start right at the beginning of the day and is normally worse when my conscientiousness is still asleep. For instance getting out of bed switching the night dream into the day dream mode I have picked up the tooth paste and carelessly doused a dollop of it onto my toothbrush only to find (with quite a shock to the system) that it was not toothpaste at all and in actuality it was Savalon that I had squeezed out of the tube, "Urrrgggggggggggg, not nice I can tell you! The flavour not to savour.

I think it is just my inability to concentrate. I look back at my school days now in awe at my total lack of awareness, one in which I drifted into a comatosed state for the vast majority of it. My maths class was by far the worst, situated on the south side of the building the warm summers sun lulling me into a warm cosy dream world as my teachers impossible to understand ethnic accent washed over me like a hypnotic chant I'd frequently slip into another place, a happy place only to be awakened by the thud of my head hitting the desk as I finally nodded off.

They'd often give us pieces of paper with little drawings on and instruct us to answer the questions, you have 10 minutes. Well frankly I could have had 10 hours and I would have been none the wiser. What sillyness was this? There would be 5 similar shapes and it would ask me to tick the odd one out. I hadn't a clue! Why was I doing this? What does it all mean? Well I now know that these were probably IQ tests and I assume that I have on my record "This child has absolutely no IQ what so ever". I would add that this child had not a clue what so ever. I generally coloured them in with my special pen which had 20 different colours - just perfect for such a task.

So I am truly sorry Claire that you have to put up with this lost and wandering mind but I feel that I should be more pitied than scolded.





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