Earlier this week, a good friend of mine showed me his ‘Bucket List’, and it got me thinking what I would put on mine. For those of you who don’t know, a ‘Bucket List’ is essentially a list of things you would like to achieve before you go to meet your maker. Rather than wait to be diagnosed with E-Coli from a dodgy cucumber before making a list, I thought I’d make one now.
A quick Google showed me some typical ones, for example swimming with dolphins or climbing a mountain. I have no desire to do either. Climbing a mountain involves too much effort, and with my level of fitness, the mountain would kill me bloody quicker than any dodgy cucumber. Same with dolphins; a story in the paper this week about a Labrador puppy biting the face off a small child proves than animals are unreliable. I’d jump in the water and Flipper would eat me.
There aren’t many places I would like to visit either, once you’ve crossed off all the countries where I won’t be eaten by wild animals or terrorists. Besides, I’m only 23 years old. Any places I really want to visit I could do so in an annual summer holiday. I find foreign travel stressful; I’d rather find a beautiful private resort and have people called Enrique and Elena bring me drinks while I relax, rather than spend hours travelling across a hot desert to find that a Pyramid looks exactly the same as it does on Google. Or be captured by pirates.
Some other suggestions included going into Space. Conveniently, Sir Richard Branston Pickle who’s famous for lots of things that have failed is building a plane that can fly into Space several times a month. This is fabulous news, except it would require me having to add ‘Rob a bank’ to my Bucket List. Not to mention I’d rather he concentrate on making a reliable broadband service than flying me into Space, where I know I’d inevitably sneeze in my helmet. God help the other passengers if a helmet isn’t required.
I was genuinely surprised by the number of people who wanted to meet their idol before they die. Although there is a problem with that; what if your idol doesn’t want to meet you? Waving your Bucket List under their noses won’t help either. Maybe ‘Getting arrested’ and ‘Obtain a restraining order’ would be more appropriate on the Bucket List. This is also applicable to people who include ‘People I want to shag’ on their list.
No, I have decided my Bucket List will consist of skills I want to have mastered. These include learning to play the guitar, learning a martial art, and obtaining a licence for a vehicle that isn’t a car.
Knowing how to play Guitar is like a big metaphorical key to getting places in life. If you reply to “What hobbies do you have?” with “I play guitar”, you are almost guaranteed a reply of “ooooooh”. For further praise, fib a little and claim you can play Lynyrd Skyrnd.
A Martial Art is something I have wanted to learn for many years now, but haven’t due to laziness. This is a shame, because at the moment calling me a pussy is a huge understatement. My fighting skills consist of apologising immediately, even if they’re in the wrong, and getting the hell out of there. So I shall start Martial Art tuition as soon as possible; it will give me great satisfaction in the future knowing that I could be a BOSS if I ever got into that sort of situation.
As for obtaining a licence, it’s pretty much settled on what sort of licence I could get. I did consider a motorbike licence, but then I reflected on the way I drive a car and realised that obtaining a motorbike licence would be the only thing I’d achieve on my Bucket List. Not to mention, as previously mentioned, animals are unreliable; a badger would run out in front of me, and the next day my liver would be in the body of another motorcyclist. I don’t trust helicopters; Colin McRae was a master of controlling vehicles and crashed one. Learning to fly a plane would also require ‘Rob a bank’ to be on the list, so that is out too. HGV licence is also a no, as that would tempt me into quitting any stressful job and taking the easy life behind the wheel of a Tesco lorry with only an iPod, a sandwich and a porn magazine to keep me company.
So I have decided to learn to drive a steam train. Yes this is technically cheating; the licence is to use the boiler on the train rather than the train itself (does this allow me to work on people’s central heating systems?). I have always loved the beauty of steam trains; I think in this modern day there should be a scientist somewhere who can use the electric power lines on the existing railways to heat up the water on board into steam. Sadly they’re all busy trying to stop global warming, or making sperm out of the skin from people’s bottoms. Which is a shame; I can only imagine how magnificent it must be to watch a steam train go full speed through a station. I also have a more significant reason to learn to drive them; my Grandfather drove them. It would be fantastic to know exactly what he did for a career that he enjoyed before his death, and make me feel a little closer to the man I never knew.
Anyway, that is my list complete. I only included skills as there are other things which I thought were common sense; a rewarding and enjoyable career, and to start a family of my own. Although I have been told that choosing skills makes me look like a character from the PC game, ‘The Sims’. So I’m off now to complain about being hungry and bored, and to wee on the floor.
