The Adventure of the Bucket List

Back when I was sixteen I created a bucket list. I'm sure you know that a bucket list is a list of things you want to do before you die or 'kick the bucket'. The list is not something I've given a lot of thought for some years but over the festive period I stumbled upon it again. At the start of a new decade I thought now would be a good time to start ticking some more things off.

The list itself is quite eclectic. In re-launching it, I've edited it a little, removing some things that twelve years on I consider less a life goal and more things I'm really not that keen on doing. Why, for example, was sixteen year old Dan keen to go on the world's biggest roller-coasters? Grown-up Dan has been on plenty of roller-coasters in his lifetime and hasn't really enjoyed any of them.

The full list can be viewed here if you want to take a look. Whilst the whole point of a bucket list is to complete it across a whole lifetime, I'm going to attempt to make 2020 a bumper year and tick off as many items as I realistically can and recount my experiences.

Before that though, I've so far ticked off fourteen of the fifty items so let's go through some of those. A fair percentage of items on the list are travel related including numbers 7 and 8, to visit Italy and Spain. In 2018 I spent a week in the Italian capital of Rome which was fantastic and I wrote about it at the time.

It was back in 2011 that I went to Majorca, which obviously is not the Spanish mainland but is part of the country of Spain and therefore counts as far as I'm concerned- my list, my rules. A fair chunk of Majorca doesn't feel very Spanish as it's so designed for tourists. I remember walking down whole streets lined with British pubs and I didn't like it one bit. For me, travelling abroad is supposed to be about discovering somewhere different to where you came from and for many British holidaymakers the parts of Majorca they go to are in no way Spanish. We did get a bit of time to see the wider island though, visiting a local market and cycling through a nature reserve complete with random donkeys wandering around which felt much more local.

Number eleven on the list is to "bet on a horse/dog race". Betting feels like a traditional rite of passage to British males. In many ways both horse and dog racing feel old-fashioned and there are lots of animal rights activists out there who will say they are downright cruel. There are certainly issues in the way the animals are sometimes treated, especially when their racing careers are over but if you spend any time in this world it becomes clear very quickly that everyone has the animal's welfare at the forefront of what they do. Whilst I don't really consider myself a gambler I have bet on horse races a few times. It's something of a family tradition for each of us to bet on a horse at the Grand National and there was a period when I would bet occasionally when one of my housemates at uni could regularly be found frequenting the local bookmakers (despite the fact that he was a practicing Muslim). 

At number fourteen on the list is "get away with perfect practical joke". In my second year of uni I lived in a house with four other students. When you are university things tend to happen spontaneously which is how, alongside my best friend at the time Josh, we ended up one afternoon turning our fellow housemate's room into a sort of Halloween grotto. There were no locks on the bedroom doors at the house which wasn't really an issue as we trusted each other enough to not have to worry about people coming in and stealing things. An empty afternoon, an unlocked door, an absent housemate and a pound shop stocked comprehensively with Halloween decorations considerably in advance of the day provided us with the perfect opportunity. Our housemate Alice arrived to find her room covered in spooky decorations including an extraordinary amount of synthetic spider webbing. 

Next on the list is "drive a car as fast as is legal". I enjoy the idea that law-abiding sixteen year old Dan couldn't conceive of breaking the speed limit. Well, I've driven a car as fast as is legal many times now and also driven much faster than the speed limit, which is how I ended up doing a driver awareness course last year. Passing my driving test proved to be quite a challenge and it took four attempts to pass- this was one of the first things I wrote about on this blog recounting from the first failure to the eventual pass. 

In at number seventeen is "learn to ski". Over the course of three winter holidays I managed to do this. I won't be participating in the Winter Olympics any time soon but I can ski. When I first started it was an utter disastor and I spent more time on the ground than stood up but by day two of the first holiday I realised it wasn't actually too hard. To be honest, the basics of skiing are not that difficult. Gravity does most of the work and all you have to do is balance. Admittedly, balancing is not my strong point but if you can manage to balance walking it's not really a great step up to being able to balance whilst skiing. That said, there was one occasion when I came towards the bottom of a slope in France. Many slopes finish at the edge of the village where you'll find plenty of cafes and bars, most of which have outdoor seating. Cue me reaching a tight corner at high speed, failing to turn in time and crashing into a load of tables and chairs and the language barrier preventing me from even being able to apologize properly. 

Finally for today we have number twenty which is "fall in love". Writing this makes me think fondly to the days of being sixteen and not really understanding this stuff. I certainly do now though. I've fallen in love a number of times over the years to varying degrees of success. On the whole my affection has not ended up being reciprocated. Either way, none of the times I've fallen in love have ever lead to anything expect pain in some way or another. Perhaps sixteen year old Dan should have put "fall in love and have someone truly love you back". Falling in love is not the difficult bit. 

There's a melancholic note to end on if ever there was one. Stay tuned throughout 2020 as I attempt to achieve the dreams of my teenage self as well as all the usual nonsense.