Well here we are again. Another new month.

Another day, another dollar, April Fool, white rabbits, doesn’t time fly, and whatever else is your way of saying the same old thing time after time.

As far as I’m concerned, I stand outside our back door, take some deep breaths, look at the hills and say ’thank you’.

Then I look down at the back garden, take some deep breaths and say, ’It’s about time I made a start’.

But the problem is not starting. The real difficulty is finishing.

Our bungalow is a shrine to the Patron Saint of ’I must get round to finishing that.’

There is a 1500-piece jigsaw puzzle of a vintage car parked on a gravel drive with a background of leafy trees, a blue sky and white fluffy clouds.

It is just over half done and has been on the go for about two years.

A rubik’s cube that I started about eight years ago. A stack of notebooks full of part written poems, ideas for the column, and short stories. A garden strimmer that has been waiting for a new cutting cord and a wheel barrow that has been moaning about it’s flat tyre since we moved to Onchan.

I could go on, but what’s the use?

The more things that I finish, is the longer the list grows. You would swear that it was a conspiracy to test my endurance.

Well I’ve got news for you. Enough is enough.

I have made my mind up and I start today. I’ve worked it out that, if I split the jobs into two categories, inside and outside, and choose one per day, depending on the weather, I should be getting close to the end of the list by Christmas.

Depending, of course, on the Good Lord and Mr Parkinson. If either of them get to me first, not only will I not get to the end of the list, I don’t think that I will be very bothered anyway.

Now at this point, I decided to shut down the desk for the day, pour a glass of ’chateau Shoprite’, and put the old feet up. Tea time, telly, and tucked up for the night.

It was a beautiful morning, and I decided to make a start on the list.

Dig out the wheel barrow. Flat tyre! OK, dig out the sack truck, two flat tyres. I see, let’s dig out the lawnmower. Petrol tank empty.

Right, this is getting personal. It’s time to get tough.

Dig out the petrol can. It’s half full. That’s more like it, now we’ll see who’s boss.

Tank full, wheels set high, engine oil checked, pull the starting cord, it breaks.

Now do you ever get the feeling that someone is trying to tell you something?

I was standing in the garden staring at the lawn mower and holding the broken cord, when a van pulls up outside the gate. It was the bloke who comes three times a year to treat the grass with whatever it is that grass needs to make it look nice.

Unfortunately, at this moment in time, our grass looks more like a silage field than a perfectly-manicured lawn.

’I see’, he said thoughtfully. ’I don’t think that I can do the Spring dressing just yet’.

I could not argue with that statement. Now I already knew that the man who weeds and feeds our grass, is not a man who cuts grass (which makes reasonable sense when you think about it). So I asked him if he could recommend someone who could help.

He said that he would phone a friend.

I spent most of the day pottering round the garden making a list of which jobs had to be tackled first.

By the middle of the afternoon I was exhausted with just thinking about it all. I decided that a gin and tonic, with ice and lemon, would be a good idea, so I retired to the Legion.

Afterwards, as I settled down for the ride home on the no 2. I felt much more relaxed.

As I walked the short distance from the bus stop, I could smell freshly cut grass. Job no 1, tick.

A decade ago Pullyman - aka Michael Cowin - was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease, a condition that affects people in different ways. Michael discovered writing and Island Life is featuring some of his musings. Sometimes topical, sometimes nostalgic, read about life as seen through the eyes of Pullyman