Space

Space, the final frontier. No matter how many times I have tidied my study in the last few years there always comes a time when papers, receipts and biscuits begin to go missing under piles of other papers, receipts and biscuits. I don’t even particularly enjoy biscuits; perhaps that is why they go uneaten. I do not even particularly enjoy receipts.

Papers, however, I enjoy. I love the ones I have written by hand on A4, on envelopes, on the backs of scrap paper, my tangled hand rendering each an inky masterpiece of swirl and scribble. Also I love the finished gloss of a computer processed document. The neat order of straight lines and block-aligned paragraphs giving space to the pristine white page below, space which a handwritten sheet would have crammed with overlapping annotated adjustments.

The air too, the air is filled with space since I gave up my pipe. I miss the old briar sometimes, feeling a study should be a place for pipe-puffing and perusing. But I feel much better in myself since the haze of black-cherry shag left my lungs. And the air is filled with space.

I begin to tidy. And where does one begin to tidy first? Piles, that’s right! I sift and sieve and stack and modest beginnings soon take on monstrous testament to my endeavour. No fewer than fourteen separate towers! Nibbling a biscuit, I take up an old document like an old friend rediscovered. And not only is this friend fascinating, he has companions in every pile bar the receipts. Before long no fewer than very many of us, papers and I, are sharing memories we had almost forgotten we had. Too many biscuits later I spy my old pipe in a drawer. Space, who needs it?!