They say that an untidy desk is a sign of an untidy mind.

They also say that an untidy desk is a sign of genius.

As with most things in life, it all depends who you listen to.

I don’t think for one moment that the state of my desk reflects the state of my mind, either positively or negatively. A desk is a handy surface on which to put things. I put things on my desk - papers to deal with, unopened post, other bits and bobs - sure, whyever not? Why else would we choose to have large flat surfaces, if not to rest things on them?

Here is my fundamental issue with the world of, well, chic living. I just can’t do that straight-from-the-pages-of-an-interior-design-magazine uncluttered chic. I see houses being showcased and toured on Channel 4’s neverending parade of property programmes and I boggle at the fact that nobody who appears on any of them ever seems to have any stuff.

Coffee tables are empty acres of glistening steel. Mantelpieces are home to a solitary bud vase - no family pictures or bills to pay, or random piles of Euros. Bookshelves house only books, and not also moisturiser, mobile phone chargers, pens and nail scissors.

Where do these people keep their pens?

I keep my pens in a clear perspex eight-compartment Muji pen holder - crazy concept, I know - on my desk. Yet somehow, writing implements seem to migrate nightly from the safety of the corral across the rest of the flat. There’s never a pen when you need one, but there’s always one when you’re looking for something else. Like nail scissors.

These people, the ones with no stuff, do they have no need to write, or cut their nails? Do they have meticulously pared-down lives which mean they have a place for everything (an everything in its place)? Or do they have a great hidden drawer full of miscellaneous junk - behind a glass-bricked wall, perhaps, or under the floating unit in the kitchen, or squirrelled away in the attic - bursting with…

• the cardboard insides of old rolls of sticky tape;
• hard rubbers (the erasing kind) - I mean, who needs to erase anything anymore? Who even writes in pencil? - which tear the paper when used, and are brittle with age;
• tape measures, both soft and metal;
  intertwined rolls of thread in colours which will never be suitable for fixing anything;

• watch batteries which may or may not function;
• three post it notes, the very end of a packet, which are gradually losing their stick;
• string of indeterminate origin or use;
  three dice, one mysteriously bigger than the others;

• an incomplete pack of cards, dogeared and loose in the drawer;
  old, blunt scissors;

• a receipt for something (unknown);
• a warranty for something (ditto);
  a lump of hard blu-tack, with curious coloured speckles in it, which you will stare at and spend some time trying to identify - is that wax? From a candle? Or a crayon? When did I last have crayons in the house? And how did they end up in my blutack?;

• a 35mm film canister, even though you can’t remember when you last used a real camera;
• a note or coin in a currency which you don’t remember using - but that doesn’t matter, since either a) the coin or b) the currency is now obsolete, but you can’t quite bring yourself to throw it away because that’s like throwing real money away, isn’t it?;
• a plastic item which may once have appeared inside a christmas cracker - NB, this will be the sort of plastic item which you might possibly have seen a vague use for (miniature magnifying glass, dice, novelty paperclip) rather than the other sort of plastic cracker toy, which can be instantly (or as soon after christmer dinner as propriety allows) discarded (fake fingertip/nail in dayglo orange, rather rubbish motorbike (also dayglo - possibly green) obviously pressed from a mould in a hurry on a productionline staffed by people on criminally low wages;
• a headphone converter jack thingy which they made you buy when you flew Canada 3000 to Vancouver five years ago (you’d have happily complained about having to pay and yet still only receiving one ear’s worth of sound, if only you’d actually been able to leave your seat to see the stewardess, as your legs had gone completely numb after being folded into approximately 3.6 square inches of space for twelve hours or so) and which is now totally, irritatingly useless, as the airline went bust;
• a crayon;
• a miniature glitter-ball, which might once have been part of a set intended for hanging on trees (or Barbie discos, who can say?) but which is now missing a number of small square mirrored pieces;
• a number of small, square mirrored pieces;
• a tube of araldite/superglue with the lid stuck firmly on;
• a small metal piece which belongs to …something, and which was put in the drawer for safekeeping until you got around to fixing it. Whatever “it” was;
• a tie-on gift label saying “Hope you enjoy this! With love from Dot” without any hints as to a) what the gift was and b) who Dot is;
• a very old lipstick which never suited you but which you still can’t chuck out “just in case” (In case what? You grow a new head which does suit Marmalade Sunrise?);
• a pair of nail-clippers, though you have no memory of ever buying or indeed using them. Does anyone?;
• a small selection of pills, gloriously liberated from packets or bottles and with no identifying marks or imprints, but which you can’t throw away because you once read an article in The Observer about how pills which are thrown away end up in the water tables which leads to higher levels of impotency and resistance to antibiotics in the population and, you know, you’d hate to feel guilty about that if you chucked them out, and you can’t just flush them down the loo, can you, because what if the fish eat them and you quite like haddock etc etc;
• a key, with no indication what it might be for;
• two AA batteries, with a bit of juice left in them;
• one tazo which came free inside a packet of crisps (collect ten and you get a free packet of crisps - but of course, you never collected any more than one, and you don’t really need a free packet of crisps, let along the nine more that it would have taken to get you there);
• two safety pins, which might come in handy. No-one knows where safety pins come from. They just appear. No-one ever buys them. Fact;
• one side of a piece of velcro;
• the back of a remote control (the front of which may well have been thrown away years ago);
• five crumbling sticks of incense which smell like student. These make the entire drawer small like student, too;
• a moist towelette from an airline which may well no longer be carrying passengers (Swissair, BWIA, Pan-Am) and which by now is probably far from moist;
• an old pair of glasses, with an old prescription in them, so therefore utterly useless to you;
• a mini sachet of foundation which fell out of a magazine once, which you are hanging onto in case you suddenly decide to start wearing foundation (although thirty years on the planet have managed to pass without the requirement) and somehow coincidentally your complexion turns the colour of pale biscuits, too, which is the only way it would ever match your skin;
• a rubber band. See safety pins, above;
• a bulldog clip. See rubber bands, above;
• a voucher, long expired, for something you didn’t want anyway;
• a phone number written on a piece of thin card, but without a name;
• a sachet of brown sugar, stolen from a cafe, even though you don’t take sugar in anything at all;
• a small screwdriver set (possibly novelty item from posh crackers, possibly not) which is so tiny that it’s impossible to get any purchase on anything you’re supposed to be screwing as you can’t actually grip the handle with more than two fingers and a thumb;
• a piece of plastic, smooth and unidentifiable, but probably Very Important Indeed.

Er.

Seem to have gone off on a bit of a tangent, there.

I’ll get my coat.