You know what they say about interesting

When I was a smartly turned-out executive my desk diary was one of those heavy, designed-to-impress jobs, quarto, gold leafed with my initials, manufactured by the Financial Times as often as not. I had a new one sometime during December, and by the time January came along it was populated with carry-over information, along with details of forward appointments, and meetings. Couldn’t live without it.

It was a badge of office thing, I suppose. Left open on the desk so’s any passing bigwig could see how busy I was, how my mysterious doings were of value to the Firm, and how in consequence I was worth my ridiculously high salary and another large raise come the end of the financial year.

I never questioned it. Not until I came to retire, that is, and went hunting for a new diary sometime in the following December, and needed to pay for it myself.

Ye gods and little fishes but those diaries are expensive things! So, I popped into Boots the Chemist and picked up a cheap one for five quid. More than adequate for my needs in retirement, I thought. They don’t make ‘em any more, which is probably just as well because each succeeding year my diary has got smaller and cost less. A lot less. In fact, these days, I’m inclined to go scrounging around my friends and associates to see if they haven’t got a spare one from the ‘courtesy’ gifts they’ve had from suppliers.

I don’t seem to get courtesy diaries any more. Not sure what that says about me.

Now, of course, I get the scrapings at the bottom of the diary barrel. The posh ones don’t come my way. I get to choose from whatever’s left when the post-room boy and the office moggie have had their pickings.

Beggars really ought not to be choosers, though, and I’m grateful for what I get. If the cover is too lurid or distasteful I put a brown paper jacket wrapper on it, otherwise it sits on my desk, saying whatever it has to say to the world.

This year I confess I’m rather taken with my freebie diary. It has a pretty-pretty watercolour picture on the glossy card cover, showing a picket fence and gate opening into a classic country cottage garden and onto a path that winds up to the door of a classic country cottage.  The only thing that’s wrong with the picture is the rather silly and impractical dove-cot on a slender pole in the garden but, well, you can’t have everything and I try to keep my wants on the modest side.

Oh, hell. I got a pretty picture on a free diary. For some unaccountable reason I really like it. I can live with that.

The thing I find puzzling is that I still seem to need a diary at all. It’s not as if I have so many appointments I couldn’t do perfectly well with a post-it note on the fridge door. Even so, I have a new diary. Come January I’ll be going through it, pulling out and shredding any identification information, and then it’ll go in for recycling while I’m scrounging up a new one for 2008. It’s a thing that I do. I’ve had a new diary every year since I can remember, starting with penny softcover ones when I was a kid. Wouldn’t feel dressed without my diary.

It’s been another of those ‘not’ days. Not cold. Not warm. Not sunny. Not completely grey. The only ‘not’ about it that I truly appreciated was there was no rain so it was not wet. I know I should count my blessings and I know I oughtn’t, but I could have wished for something more exciting in the way of weather today.

So when Graham suggested I start eBaying the stuff we’re absolutely certain not to need or want in this house, and which doesn’t fall into the heritage band of things that have to be wrapped carefully and kept, just in case, I was obviously not as receptive as he’d hoped.

“I need time to work up my enthusiasm for that job,” I said. “I spent an awful lot of time doing in in the run up to moving here and I can’t see the fun in it just now. Leave it with me and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Well, alright,” he said. “Don’t be too long about it, though.”

This evening, losing patience with me, he announced his intent to start selling the stuff himself.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I know I ought to have made a start…”

“Don’t worry about it. You did a great job last time and I don’t mind having a go.”

So, he’s put his first item up, and lined a whole list of things to follow on. He’s always been more of a buyer than a seller on eBay but I suspect he’ll do at least as well as me, and probably better.  I’ll see about rejoining the ’silver sellers’ when the weather warms up.

And that’s about as much as I can trawl from my day today. Not terribly interesting but you know what they say about interesting.