CARD SENSE

Well, it's been over a month since "the Event" now, but, as I was lying in bed as the daylight crept into our bedroom, I noticed that the five birthday cards I received for my fiftieth birthday were still standing on the shelves, as predicted by me in an online conversation that I had at the time, and gathering the inevitable layer of dust.

I thought I did rather well getting five, given my lifestyle, circumstances, and the fact that I rarely admit to having birthdays at all. It was, at least, one for every decade, and I didn't think that was all that bad an average, to be honest with you.

They very nearly got removed after a week, even though - for various reasons some of which involved my memory playing up - it had taken a couple of days for them to actually get displayed at all, but then a late one arrived and it seemed churlish not to let that one have its place in the sun.

And then weeks went by, and I stopped really noticing that they were there, and suddenly they've been standing there for an age and have become like part of the furniture, much like the Valentine's Day cards from the past two years that loiter on the rather inaccessible mantelpiece downstairs.

Yes, we have bought into that desperately exploitative annual ritual despite everything I may or may not have said about it in that cynical way of mine.

Sometimes I think that our place is becoming rather like a modern-day version of Miss Haversham's place in "David Copperfield" thanks to my own serious lack of get up and go these days, and my desperate need to cling on to something in what is increasing becoming apparent to me as my depression.

It's quite odd really; whenever you see those hoarders on TV, they always seem to have gone through some sort of emotional crisis that triggered it, and yet I seem to have spent my entire adult life desperately trying to cling on to some notion of the past that probably never even really existed, and this clutter that I've accumulated around myself appears to be some kind of manifestation of that.

One day, we'll get to the bottom of what happened.

After all, I am still rather envious of a friend and contemporary that I once knew who I've not seen in years now. He rented rooms and was able, at the drop of a moment's inappropriate behaviour, to pack his entire life into three holdalls and make a fresh start in the blink of an eye.

I would need a relatively large sized truck, a storage unit, a bonfire, and a team of people to get this rubbish out of the place, because, despite the many, many thoughts I've had over the years about what you actually "need" in life, somehow all of these books, magazines, videotapes, discs, and other junk give me a sense of security that it is difficult to explain to anyone not similarly afflicted.

So then, factoring in the late arrivals... what is the optimum display time for such things as birthday cards…?

A week...?

A month…?

Hell freezing over…?

Or (as is most likely chez nous) until they crumble into dust and become indistinguishable from the shelf upon which they sit… because, as I mentioned earlier, after a year or two, they really do become like part of the furniture, and you stop noticing they're there and I've had jobs - and relationships - where I've felt like that, too...