Some people find hoovering comforting; some people delight in ironing; others are only happy when they are filing. All of these people are, of course, irremediably mad and should be treated with contempt whenever encountered.

Take filing for example; everyone has to do some at some time or other, bringing out the old shoe box or totally unsuitable container packed higgledy-piggledy with documents which would be difficult or impossible to replace. These documents will be packed in a way which, you will be informed, is according to a logical system known only to the box owner and looking completely random to everyone else.

For most people however, there is not such thing as filing; there are merely accumulations of relevant papers in various locations of spectacular inappropriateness. In most houses important documents are found rather like erratic stones left behind after a glacier has melted: surprising outcrops of papers in unlikely places.

I have known people to have their insurance documents, MOT certificate and passports in the kitchen drawer – you know, THAT kitchen drawer which always contains the things like the zest peelers which doesn’t fit anywhere else, so it lurks under the menus for the Chinese and Indian restaurants and is never found until after you wanted to use it, THAT kitchen drawer. Well, I suppose they always knew where to find them.

There are, of course, people who actually possess filing cabinets in their own homes! How can they justify such a confusion of Office and Home: unhealthy and unnatural! Unless, of course, like me, you can justify their use. Of course!

In my present denuded state with all the things that make for civilized living cwtched in Pickford’s I am reduced to one plastic expanding wallet; a rather tasteful ‘Snopake’ document carrier and a few coloured slip cases. More than enough, you might think, for a person who has most of his stuff in store and is no longer engaged in education.

I was amazed at how much paper I had acquired and how much sorting I had to do. It was at this point that a useful confusion of Office and Home came to the fore.

At one time having a stapler in the home was an innovation. Then the computer: I remember when I was teaching in Kettering the advent of the first computer in the school which was a BBC B and regarded with wonder and awe. Now computers have been domesticated and, with their link with home domestic media made them an essential part of the home scene. Computer printers often have the facility to double as photocopiers, so another aspect of Office life finds its way into the home.

But, the most startling item of almost exclusive office use a few years ago which has migrated into the everyday home is the shredder.

I find shredder use invigorating and wonderfully liberating. That sounds somewhat overstated, but it’s true! There is a finality about the shredding of documents that eliminates them from your consciousness. That uneasy feeling that to throw away some bits of paper might turn out to be counter productive and therefore they need to be kept, can be shredded together with the document in a couple of seconds: doubt gone, document gone, mind cleared! Shredders should be available on the National Health!

It is surely only in what used to be East Germany that the cross shredded remains of documents are painstakingly pieced back together again in a doomed attempt to reconstruct the full extent of insane psychotic suspicion which fuelled the bureaucratic backed spying which characterised the old Communist regime. For the rest of humanity, a cross shredded document is, to all intents and purposes, gone.

The advent of the green composting bin in Cardiff encourages the use of a shredder as shredded paper is an acceptable product to add to the garden waste that is the basis for selective refuse collection. So, not only is shredding those stubborn pieces of paper that refuse to be thrown away therapeutic, but it is also an essential part of conservation and a way of reducing ones carbon footprint.

I’ve just been watching the Budget broadcast by Gordon Brown: a terrifying experience!

His ‘jolly face’ complete with ‘friendly smile’ is one of the most chilling things I’ve seen since the last rerun of ‘The Fog’ by Stephen King. Brown smiles as though there is someone off camera frantically grinning to him to indicate what he ought to be doing. And his breathing! He’s a mouth breather; to take a breath he seems to push his lower jaw downwards and slightly outwards and the sides of his mouth from the ends of his mouth convert his lower jaw into a an exact replica of a ventriloquist’s dummy! I feel there is significance in that observation, but I am still searching for it.

The saga of the bank continues and now First Direct has caught the contagion of incompetence which had hitherto been the exclusive property of HSBC Rumney.

The story continues.