100 Things

Cotesloe, Perth, Australia.

I spent this Christmas in Australia with my sister and her fiancée who live there and my parents who were also out visiting. It was an amazing experience I’ll never forget.

What I wanted to share today was not my adventures around Australia but my plan of adventures yet to come, my bucket list.

Bucket List, to me, (before heading to Australia) was an amusing(ish) film about two men (Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson) who are dying and trying to complete a list of things they’ve always wanted to do before kicking the bucket. Not a new concept – true. Not a concept that ever particularly interested me either, but the more I thought about it the more logical and exciting it became. I did not however start thinking of a bucket list because I had seen this film or because I was dying but because, by chance, when I was shopping for Christmas presents in Australia this smiley chap caught my attention… (I also didn’t want to buy a Powderfinger book or a book about some Australian Cricket player… It would seem Aussies only sell books by other Aussies…)

100 Things by Sebastian Terry is a book about one man’s mission to complete his bucket list of 100 things that he wrote after the loss of a close friend. On his list was ‘Number 100: Publish a Book’. It seemed he had ticked off about half the things on his list, certainly enough to write a book about. I demolished the book in 4 days, beating my own book-finishing personal best by about two weeks. As soon as I finished it I wrote to the author basically thanking him for writing a book that had left an impression on me.

Two weeks later I got a response:

Neil,
Thanks for the kind words!
You’re not the only one who doesn’t read too much- I think the last book I read was the BFG!
I’m so glad that the book left a positive impression with you.
I spent some time in Scotland and even did my medical trial there.
Get involved buddy, I’m so stoked your going to blame me for the things that screw up- I think they’re sometimes the best things haha
Take care man and talk soon,
Enjoy this sun!
Seb

(The medical trial he was referring to was ‘Number 13: Be in a Medical Trial’)

Not the only ones with a list

Since making a 3-item bucket list when I was about 14 and completing it 6 years ago I guess I’ve just floated around a bit (FYI: the list was: release a single; release an album; release a record on vinyl… not massively imaginative, but it entertained me for seven years.)

The book made me think about how much I really liked having those set-in-stone goals to achieve, and – like the book said – it was the bits that go wrong and the people you meet on your way to achieving the goals that end up being more important than the goals themselves. But I guess some people, like me, need the goals to drive them. So after a bit of thought I committed to paper my own 100 things; things that I’ve always wanted to do; things that would take me out of my comfort zone; things that just sounded fun to do, there are no real rules to a bucket list…

1. Catch and eat a fish
2. Go to a music festival abroad
3. Run an ultra-marathon
4. Write a concept album
5. Visit my uncle in San Francisco
6. Climb a mountain alone
7. Photograph a kiss in Paris
8. Make something completely from scratch
9. Learn to drive
10. Photograph the Milky Way
11. Play Moonlight Sonata on the piano (mistake free)
12. Understand “A Brief History of Time”
13. Complete a physics degree
14. Paint a (big) picture
15. Get a traditional (non-gun) tattoo
16. Learn to do first aid
17. Take singing lessons
18. Cycle the length of the UK
19. Crew in the tall ships race
20. Erect a monument to someone
21. Week without human contact
22. Randomly give someone a mental day to remember
23. Play guitar in a band
24. Help someone achieve an item on their bucket list
25. Eat a meal of insects
26. Bungee jump
27. See a Jackson Pollack painting
28. Run in an election
29. See an opera
30. Marry someone
31. Learn to swim
32. Model for someone
33. Send letters to a pen-friend
34. Write a piece of music for someone
35. Go to a jazz bar in New Orleans
36. Create a piece of street art
37. Bind a book
38. Work for a charity
39. Shoot a gun
40. Start a chant
41. Work behind a bar
42. Go to see a drive-in movie
43. Get hypnotised
44. Attend a cookery course
45. learn to pick locks
46. Present an award
47. Learn to skate a mini ramp
48. See Alcatraz
49. Play drums in a cave
50. Complete Granddad’s Rubix Cube
51. Go on a rant – in public.
52. Isolation tank
53. Swim in the Dead Sea
54. Go to Hindu Holi Festival
55. Throw a frisbee off something very high
56. Minister a wedding
57. Be an actor
58. Cycle in a velodrome
59. Write to an MP
60. Release an LP
61. Look at the sun through a telescope
62. See the Northern Lights
63. Run a marathon in less than 3 hours
64. Live on a boat
65. See Flamenco played in Andalusia
66. Be part of a flash mob
67. Go on a tasting course
68. Raise an animal
69. Learn to play the harmonica
70. 100 chin ups
71. Contribute an article to Wikipedia
72. Work in a youth hostel
73. Make a short film
74. Lead a climb
75. Build a treehouse
76. Fly in a glider
77. See a ‘nightbow’
78. Write a book
79. Go 4x4ing
80. Campaign for something until it happens
81. Wear a kilt for a week
82. Parachute jump
83. Enter a sporting competition without training
84. Ride a horse
85. Ride the worlds biggest roller-coaster
86. Cook a meal for 20+ people
87. Spend time in a cell
88. Be asked to give a lecture
89. Straight out a sauna, straight into snow.
90. Round the world ticket
91. Busk for charity for a week
92. Get a cut-throat razor shave
93. Change my name
94. Protest on Wall Street
95. Put ￡100 on black
96. Serenade someone from the street
97. Visit Parliament
98. Hold a snake
99. Build an instrument
100. Learn another language

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