Executive Leather

Although I look around me and still see nought but boxes, it has been a busy and mildly productive weekend. Really.

On Saturday I travelled into town to pick up some essential items of tidiness. One, a new shredder. My existing shredder turned up its toes after I used it too much, and apparently that's not how shredders should be operated. At first resolving never to buy such useless technology again, I soon found that being unable to shred was a major barrier to the tidying-up project. Too many items of interest that just can't be thrown away in an unsecured fashion - such as the thousands of credit card cheques which I seem to keep getting sent.

Item number two, a new office chair upon which to sit. My old office chair has given good service (probably about four or five years) but in recent months has developed an annoying habit of sinking to the ground whenever it is sat upon. This is, to put it mildly, bloody infuriating. And finally, I could take it no more. Were it not to have been replaced immediately, I would have single-handedly hurled it down three flights of stairs. Actually that might have taken too long, I'm far more likely to have hurled it over the balcony, which would be very bad news for my neighbours below.

So it was that after a little queueing in Argos, I ordered a slightly more expensive shredder than I had last time, and a slightly less expensive office chair than I had last time. I sometimes worry about shopping in Argos, since I hear that it is not good for the image, but frankly I quite like the place, and, after eBay, it's my first port of call for the all kinds of everything which I may need to purchase.

It turns out that both my purchases were free, more or less, on account of my having somehow accrued seventeen million Nectar points, or something like that. Which is better still. So, having humped a surprisingly heavy shredder and an even heavier chair back home, it was time for the turnaround to begin.

It turns out that the new expensive shredder is also a delicate soul and that I should not be thinking of doing more than one minute's shredding out of every 10. This is a little inconvenient at first, when you have lots of shredding to do, but I'm sure things will be fine once the backlog is cleared. Even though it has a large bin, and shreds into confetti rather than those soppy ruler-sized strips as found on cheaper shredders, I still find that the bin fills up annoyingly quickly. But no matter. I am shredding. Slowly, but surely, I am tidying up. Order is coming from chaos. I feel as if I'm doing something.

Meanwhile, the office chair is of course flat-packed, and some assembly was required. I never fail to be impressed at the ingenuity of how easy these things turn out to be, and tonight I was not disappointed. While there was a little huffing and puffing, and some confusion as to which way around the seat was suposed to point, I am pleased to report that I am now seated in my executive management leather super-swivellomatic chair. A snip at just £24.99, or 5000 Nectar points. Donald Trump himself could not have found a better bargain. My back is supported, and I am no longer sinking to the ground. It is gorgeous and I love it dearly. I would swivel and casually shred a few documents but I had to unplug the shredder to plug in something else earlier. Nonetheless, I expect that there will be significant concurrent shredding and swivelling occuring in the near future.

Unfortunately, as with all things, there were also casualties. My left hand (which I stopped using, briefly, several months ago) caused an ouchie earlier while I was trying to assemble the chair and get it up the stairs. I'm fairly sure I'm going to have to get it looked at eventually.

In other news, this afternoon I have sold several more items on eBay, so The King of Postage will probably be busy with labels and stamps and jiffy bags tomorrow. I'm not sure that this activity will create a significant amount of space, but again, it makes me feel as if I am doing something.

The grand tidy-up continues, although it has been slowed down slightly by the uncovering of many large boxes of videotapes, which of course must be viewed and checked before they can be tidied towards their logical destination. I am finding many tapes which have nothing of any interest on them at all, which is excellent, because I am building up a big box of blanks that can be used again. On the minus side, I don't really use videotapes any more and nobody seems at all interested in buying old ones on eBay. I may have to give them away. They take up toomuch room for me to keep them for the many thousands of years that would be required for them to be 'rare' again.

I have about 25 more items about to end on eBay. Someone is bidding more than £10 for an old magazine. It is indeed a pleasant surprise to find that something just taking up space was, in fact, truly "rare". And someone even wants one of the Betamax tapes as well. What an evening it is.

So as I sit here with my chocolate milkshake, I can't help but feel that while I have done much, I have also, simultaneously, done little. I hope to continue the cleanup next week, if work doesn't keep me too busy. We'll see.