(Post title actually suggested by Zinnia Cyclamen.)
Nonono, Mike, while I appreciate the time and effort that’s clearly gone into this, and not being jealous of your lovely sunny holiday afternoon at all – one title is aspirational, beautiful, a window to your dreams and a catalyst to our own imaginings, the other is merely unprompted advice and the gateway to TMI.
Do the other title instead! The other one! Do the other!
– anna
Now then young Diva, you may think it’s clever to change the title of your assignment, but we do not spend hours carefully thinking up titles that will both stretch you and entertain your readership for you to wilfully ignore them. We will therefore expect the set version to be completed and handed in before the end of the month (like wot Anna said) or There Will Be Trouble and You Will Be In It. Do I make myself clear?
OK, enough already! For I am nothing if not eager to please. The list which follows was compiled this morning, sitting out in PDMG#1, on the second gloriously scorching hot day of our 11-day holiday (which I think I might have briefly mentioned before, in passing).
Unlike its predecessor (see below), the order of which was jiggled around with for “artistic” purposes, this list is presented strictly in order of the thoughts which dropped into my head.
OK, let’s catalyse those imaginings!
1. Visit Australia.
2. Visit New Zealand. That’s two separate trips, and hence two separate items on the list. No, I don’t consider this cheating.
3. Go for an overnight trip on a traditional rice boat on the backwaters of Kerala. (Thanks for the suggestion, z.)
4. Interview one of my heroes. This year to date, I’ve already missed out on Neil Tennant (holiday-related communications cock-up) and Boy George (UK tour cancelled, and stretching the definition of “hero” in any case). But the time will surely come, won’t it?
5. Meet some of my most long-standing readers and/or fellow bloggers in person. To redress the imbalance of #1 and #2 above, I’m going to condense six items into one: asta in Canada, Peter in Leith, Gordon in Glasgow, Zed in Belgium, Joe in New York City, and the eternally elusive DG in Bow. Amongst others, naturellement…
6. Leave Nottingham. Sorry, Nottingham. It’s not you, it’s me.
7. Give up full-time paid employment, well in advance of the official retirement age.
8. Dance the Hustle.
9. Dine at El Bulli.
10. Attend a Nick Cave concert. To the best of my knowledge, Cave has only played Nottingham once. I bought a ticket, and then FORGOT TO GO, only realising several days later. This had never happened before, and I intend to ensure that it never happens again.
11. Win a f**king blog award for just once in my f**king life, rather than just being nominated and short-listed and long-listed for the f**king things all the f**king time, I mean I know I should be grateful and all that, but to have the carrot repeatedly dangled and snatched away, well, it needs a little resolution is all, and then I can be all gracious and self-effacing and oh-but-these-things-don’t-really-matter, but not before, OK?
12. Host a radio show. Preferably one in which I get to play music. I loved doing those summer podcasts in 2005 and 2006.
13. Throw a 25th anniversary party. (There’s less than three years to go on that one.)
14. See the Northern Lights. Or aurora borealis, if you will.
15. Become a god-father. (As distinct from “Fairy Godmother of British blogging“.)
16. Write an article for a nationally distributed print-based publication. (Time Out London came closest, but not quite close enough.)
17. Get to the bottom of the Beatles mystery, once and for all. (I had a really good lead on this last year, but the trail fizzled out.)
18. Re-visit my home town; it’s “a cocktail of urban and rural where the delights of a modern bustling town centre are complemented by picturesque villages, historic market towns and unspoilt countryside”, apparently. Not having been back since my grandmother’s funeral in 1992, I can only conclude that the old place has seen some fairly massive changes…
19. DJ, for one last time, in an end-of-High-Fidelity kind of way. The old tunes, to the old crowd. I’m not fussed about no swanky venue or nothing; the village hall would do just fine.
20. Finish transcribing the second half of my mother’s memoirs (aka The London Years). Cracking good, they are.
21. Re-establish contact with a certain long lost cousin; I was a page-boy at her wedding in 1970.
22. Get a funky pied-à-terre in London Town.
23. Throw a 50th anniversary party.
24. Ensure that my mother is properly looked after in her old age.
25. Create something which people can remember me by; or, as K put it, “leave a lasting legacy”. Ah, how we feeble mortals strive for the eternal…
troubled diva 
Current score, nearly nine years later: nine and a third (or seven and a third, if you’re being ultra-strict).
Are you going to tell us which ones…?
#4 – I interviewed my all-time musical hero, Kevin Ayers.
#5 – I met Gordon and Zed, so that’s my 1/3 point.
#6 – Goodbye Nottingham, hello Knaresborough.
#7 – Goodbye, office.
#12 – If hosting an internet radio show counts. (I was also a regular programme guest on Proper Radio.)
#16 – I wrote regularly for The Guardian, including a cover story on Eurovision for the old Film & Music supplement.
#17 – I got to the bottom of the Beatles mystery. Sadly, it wasn’t the actual Beatles.
#18 – Hello, Doncaster.
#19 – I DJ-ed recently, and will be doing so again next week.
#25 – It’s stretching the point somewhat, but my Guardian feature on the resurgent Nottingham music scene did have a significant and lasting impact.
By the end of this month, I’ll be up to ten and a third; item #21 is imminent.