How about a desk diary? What if I keep this really close? It’s going that way anyway. A diary of the desk. In this place, a coffee spill is a major event. If we moved house, I would take a photo – many photos – and put the objects back where they were, here, at a new location, in a different workroom. (That’s unlikely to happen for years; we can’t afford it.) Why a photo? It’s not like I don’t know where they go: the rhinoceros, the Mercedes; the pen pot (white ceramic F H FAULDING & CO LTD GOLDEN EYE OINTMENT), the pencil pot (shining stainless steel). Overall, the Anglepoise. Uncle Anglepoise, PAT IN UK AND ABROAD. Never thought of it as Uncle before. I will stop, because these things are of no interest to anyone but me.) (I will continue, because what is this diary for if not things of no interest to anyone but me?) I went through a period of acquiring metal objects – along with the lamp, the brushed metal filing cabinet over my right shoulder, the metal mug in which I have my coffee. My good-as-I-can-make-it coffee – which I sometimes spill. If my desk-objects weren’t metal, then they were black plastic. But it’s wooden things I want around me most of all. Woodface was probably the first. The Green Man – French. I was fourteen- or fifteen-years-old, and with my father in a Brocante in the Dordogne. I remember hundreds of chairs piled up to a ceiling as high as the rafters in a village church. Dad was doing a deal; the antiquaire gave me the carved-leafy face for free. A gift – originally from a dresser or a seat-stall in a chapel. They have a name, ornaments that surmount pillars within antique furniture – my father would know it, unless he’s forgotten it. I could phone him to find out, but I don’t want to hear his voice as he speaks about Mum. Not right now. Of course, she might still answer – as she won’t in future. (I will phone when I’m finished.) The Green Man has been with me for over thirty years, and is important, colossal, always calling me back to him. He’s made of dense chocolatey wood. I would like a desk made of the same wood, not too heavy, but with lots of drawers to hide things in. Secret drawers.
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