My Room.

Today I heard Clive James on the radio; he picked his words with deliberate care. Every utterance was delivered with his soft, round Australian accent. I've no idea what he was talking about but something was a "huge, horrible pulsating mass."

In the corner of my bedroom, hidden by the edge of my desk, sits a tangled web of underwear, socks and shirts; not too many but just enough to catch my peripheral vision. Now my pants are neither huge nor horrible and, as for a pulsating mass...... it's none of yours or any-ones business so I shan't say: there are some events that should remain secret; pulsating pants being somewhere near the top of the list.

My desk is a modern sculpture: work in progress; working desk; writing desk. Papers and pens are scattered like discarded kindling among autumn leaves. Notes lie strewn and crumpled towards the back of the work-surface like jetsam at high-tide. A white table lamp stands guard like a miniature lighthouse ready to alert lost books to the danger of running aground on detritus. My laptop rises through the disorder like a luxury liner entering a Mediterranean port; keys resembling portholes, the screen a glistening hull.

Next to the desk is a wastepaper basket brimming with more balls of paper; some screwed, some scrunched, some crumpled: all accurately discarded with precise aim. An attaché case stands beside a blue and white golfing-umbrella; an umbrella that’s not seen a golf course and only once performed the duty it was designed for: the autumn has been unusually dry.

Beside a brown wardrobe is the bed: double duvet; single bed.

The last item in the room is a small cabinet. On the small cabinet there is a try. On the tray are mugs. Beside the mugs are a bowl. In the bowl a few used tea-bags send the scent of darjeeling, and earl gray into the heart of the room to battle with the creeping odour from the laundry. The same laundry that Clive James described as a “huge horrible pulsating mass”: but to me it’s an integral part of my room.