Simon Armitage/To Do List

• Sharpen all pencils.
• Check off-side rear tyre pressure.
• Defrag hard-drive.
• Consider life and times of Donald Campbell, CBE.
• Shampoo billiard-room carpet.
• Learn one new word per day.
• Make circumnavigation of Coniston Water by foot, visit Coniston Cemetery to pay respects.
• Achieve Grade 5 Piano by Easter.
• Go to fancy dress party as Donald Campbell complete with crash helmet and life jacket.
• Draft pro-forma apology letter during meditation session.
• Check world-ranking.
• Skim duckweed from ornamental pond
• Make fewer “apple to apple” comparisons.
• Consider father’s achievements only as barriers to be broken.
• Dredge Coniston Water for sections of wreckage/macabre souvenir.
• Lobby service-provider to un-bundle local loop network.
• Remove all invasive species from British countryside.
• Build 1/25 scale model of Bluebird K7 from toothpicks and spent matches.
• Compare own personality with traits of those less successful but more popular.
• Eat (optional).
• Breathe (optional).
• Petition for high-speed fibre-optic broadband to this postcode.
• Order by Express delivery DVD copy of Across the Lake starring Anthony Hopkins as “speed king Donald Campbell.”
• Gain a pecuniary advantage.
• Initiate painstaking reconstruction of Donald Campbell’s final seconds using archive film footage and forensic material not previously released into public domain.
• Polyfilla all surface cracking to Bonneville Salt Flats, Utah.
• Levitate.
• Develop up to four thousand five hundred pounds/forse of thrust.
• Carry on regardless despite suspected skull fracture.
• Attempt return run before allowing backwash ripples to completely subside.
• Open her up.
• Subscribe to convenient one-a-day formulation of omega oil capsules for balanced and healthy diet.
• Reserve full throttle for performance over “measured mile”.
• Relocate to dynamic urban hub.
• Eat standing up to avoid time-consuming table manners and other non-essential mealtime rituals.
• Remain mindful of engine cut-out caused by fuel-starvation.
• Exceed upper limits.
• Make extensive observations during timeless moments of somersaulting prior to impact.
• Disintegrate.