For someone who shies away from minimalism like Dr. Atkins from a potato I find myself disconcertingly preoccupied with de-cluttering. Perhaps I have SAD, now that August has officially declared itself the new winter. With all this bleak weather keeping us indoors there are only so many matinee films you can watch and bubblegum books you can read.

De-cluttering does have its merits though, making you feel righteous and ready for a new start. Old books, old shoes, old Pet Shop Boys tapes are passed on to someone new by way of Oxfam. Where you will inevitably pick up twice us much stuff as you came with. It is like a redistribution of junk and bric-a-brac, constantly in circulation.

I always imagined that I would enjoy living in some higgedly-piggeldy bohemian cottage but the horrific truth is I like clean surfaces and the knowledge that I have nothing of any value. Or, indeed, nothing at all. All my life I have sneered at these French (they were always French in my life) families who lived in white boxes with lots of glass and more white furniture but now I see that I was secretly one of them all along. I went to a wedding once where the couple had asked for a ludicrously expensive cigar ashtray. And neither one smoked. I am happy in the knowledge that if my flat was to burn down I would be the only thing that I would want to save.