Last updated at 21:27, Friday, 05 March 2010

I AM the first to admit that my work station is not the tidiest in the office.

Indeed, there is little to choose between it and the bin on the floor beneath it.

The email revolution has meant that we only get one-tenth of the post we used to by snail mail – so why is my desk always buried beneath paper?

Several acres worth of trees is strewn over my desk, while those of colleagues remain junk-free zones.

It is possibly because I am an inveterate hoarder, and cannot bear to throw anything away, just in case it might come in useful one day.

Among the things I came across during a desultory shuffling of the paper mountain was that supposedly indispensable journalist’s aid, my contacts book.

I have had my current one for the best part of 40 years, and it is crammed with the names and numbers of the famous and not so famous from all parts of the district.

Unfortunately, I never remember to keep it up-to-date, which means that the vast majority of people in it are dead.

Turning to a page of Bs at random, the majority are either deceased, doolally or left the district years ago.

It is lavishly festooned with Sellotape, because of its tendency to fall apart due to its great age.

It is older than most of the staff in the Courant newsroom, but I still have to turn to them should I wish to ring someone.

They all have electronic devices about their person from which they summon the numbers of every person on the planet.

On the odd occasion I do find a number in my venerable contacts book, I am invariably told by the snooty lady from BT that that number is not recognised.

This may have something to do with the fact that most of the numbers date back to the times before every dialling code had to start with 01.

I occasionally have a sift through the masses of paper, in the hope that one of the envelopes may have a Penny Black adhering to it.

That’s not as far-fetched as it may sound; one recent excavation unearthed the minute books for Hexham’s plans to celebrate Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee.

I put it to one side on the grounds that it would make a splendid feature – but now I can’t find it again!

Also among the flotsam and jetsam was a can of fly spray, dated 1986, which I occasionally deploy to discourage the millions of little black flies which make the Courant office their home each summer.

It doesn’t seem to have any deleterious effect on the flies, but the noxious fumes produce gratifying howls of protest from other members of staff.

At the tail end of last week, I had cleared sufficient space on my desk to notice just how grubby my computer keyboard had become.

It was coated in crumbs from 1,000 growlers, pasties, stotties and crisps glued into place by the residue from my regular Friday sausage sandwich, the occasional box of Billy Paxton’s chips, and the odd sneeze.

Among the other stuff I discovered was a knife, which I used to prise off all the keys, put them in a Tesco bag, and give them a good dousing in Fairy Liquid in the gents’ toilet.

A quick rub with a paper towel, and they came up as good as new.

The same paper towel was used to scrape off the worst of the sticky stuff from the base board, and everything looked as good as new.

I have been typing for a living for over 40 years, but when it came to reassembling the keyboard, I suddenly realised I had absolutely no idea which key went where.

It took almost an hour of checking with a colleague’s machine before almost everything was back in place.

Then I discovered the Tesco bag was empty – as was the slot for the letter P.

It took a further 20 minutes of scrabbling on the floor before I found the P inside the folds of my umbrella, whence I had inadvertently pinged it.

With a sign of relief, I slotted it in place, and was surveying my work with a deal of satisfaction when a lady from the advertising department offered me a slice of cream sponge cake.

I hastily accepted – and liberally showered my pristine keyboard with about a hundredweight of icing sugar.

First published at 09:45, Friday, 05 March 2010
Published by http://www.hexhamcourant.co.uk