Vicky Ewan: Why I’m boxing clever in the fine art of calendar management

For some years now, I have employed the services of a ‘family calendar’ to assist with the daily activities of our brood.

You may be familiar with this piece of wall-hanging stationery: it features the months of the year divided into week-to-view pages, with squares provided for each day of the week arranged in columns allocatable to a number of family members, so that appointments can be recorded individually by person, and thus referred to with ease – by me, at least.

I am always gratified when there are sufficient spaces for each member of the family, as this is not a given: last year’s edition was short by one space for my household, and my husband and I were obliged to share a slot.

To avoid confusion, I decided to identify which event or task pertained to each of us by placing bracketed initials alongside the entry. Perhaps not unexpectedly, this highlighted the fact that most of the activity was mine, or ours jointly – as, I suspect, may be the case in many households featuring women and children.

It was something of a salve to my fragile ego that the demands upon my time outnumbered his (O! What a needy little creature I am!), and as my husband rarely seemed to consult the calendar, it seemed of little consequence.

Nevertheless, I was glad to discover that we were able to avail ourselves of separate boxes this year, and roundly ignored the suggestion from my youngest that I should stick to the status quo and utilise the spare space for Miss Pup, on the basis that she is – so far as we know – unable to read (she has never yet cowered on seeing the word ‘Vet’ scrawled across the calendar in my space, for an entry that likely applies to her – or perhaps she merely thinks I am visiting for my own needs; who knows how her doggy mind works?).

This year’s calendar version – a thoughtful Christmas gift, as has also been the case in the past – is particularly aesthetically pleasing, showcasing the pretty prints of a pottery design company I love.

The calendar hangs in close proximity to a set of wooden shelves where choice pieces of this pottery are prominently displayed; it’s a perfect complement, and makes a cheerful sight, with its colourful squares filled with (admittedly untidy) script that outlines the hustle and bustle of the household – though this has not always been the case.

I possessed a similar calendar four years ago, and made a point, as I do now, of updating its entries on a Sunday or Monday, ready for the week ahead. It was pleasant to track the busy nature of family life through its pages, even during the low months:

January’s and February’s columns were festooned with ink, and the same was true for most of March. Then, in a totally unprecedented manner, disaster struck, as we heralded the insidious arrival of a potent virus upon our shores and, within weeks, were entombed inside restrictions so constraining that no further social entries filled those forlorn calendar spaces.

Instead, all that could possibly feature was ‘Covid test’ of one form or another, the only justifiable reason to have an appointment outside the house for our otherwise healthy family.

It was visually disheartening: page after page of blank space reflecting back at us the emptiness of our days at that time. Those with greater ingenuity and presence of mine than I may have viewed this period an opportunity of one kind or another for the calendar’s otherwise redundant paper: cutting the pages in some artistic way for crafting, perhaps, or using them as stylish wrap; filling them in, in a droll fashion, might have been a novel alternative, too: square after square of ‘Doing nothing’, interspersed with the occasional ‘Possible change of pyjamas’.

It did occur to me at one point that I could perhaps complete the entries retrospectively; despite having had nothing planned in advance, there may have been something that occurred that was worthy of my recording (I imagine ‘Walk’ and ‘Cruise ship sighting’ would have featured heavily here).

It was a relief when the multiple Lockdowns came to a final, conclusive end, and the world began tentatively to emerge from its socially-deprived sleep – and I could return pen to paper, hurrah! Sanity (and ego) restored.

There is a downside to having so much space at my disposal in this year’s calendar, I should acknowledge; I habitually mis-columnise entries and temporarily allocate events to the wrong child – errors which could have led to disappointments and awkward questions.

One of my sons narrowly escaped observing that he had a Saturday work shift from 9am till 3pm – not ideal, at the tender age of eleven. Still, those colourful pages are undeniably a blessing; how else would I remind everyone just how important I am? Of course, it would help if they actually read them.