Super Shine Sunday...

...Reflecting on previous rant about 'Lean Bananas' of course puts one in mind of the eternal struggle against entropy and chaos. Quite which one of Newton's Laws - one suspects some combination - is responsible for this un-state of affairs I can never quite fathom. Sufficient to say the man has been off my Christmas card list these many a year.

With whatever rigour and vigour one applies oneself to maintaining a clean and tidy office, where every article and item is precisely where it needs to be, in which there is a beauteous visible flow of work and time is not wasted wondering where on earth the very necessary but completely mislayed document can have vanished to - no matter the intention and the desire in rapid time the perfectly ordered workstation becomes but a chaotic bundle of random components.

It may have seemed logical at some point for any particular pile of detritus to comprise a book of the mad sayings of George W Bush, two complete maps of the British Isles, three unidentifiable receipts, a newspaper cutting from the Guardian concerning some NHS mishap, a photograph of a James Joyce lookalike, half a bank statement, an anonymous telephone number, a new and unsigned credit card, a few unsent Christmas cards and a reminder to book tickets for next month's John Martyn concert...but on Super Shine Sunday one can only gasp at and grapple with the mess and muddle that is my life.

"Ma Vie Est Une Messe" wrote an overly-pious French nun, meaning of course that she had become entirely one with the sacred Mass. I though prefer the non-literal translation - "I create chaos therefore I am."

Nine and one half hours today have been dedicated to wresting order from this chaos. Surfaces are shiny and neat. Papers are placed just-so. All out of date medicines have been discarded. Shoes even have been polished and books ranked according to a height vs. to-soon-be-read matrix.

And at the end of it all what voice do I hear? That of Dom. James late of Q who on reviewing my wondrously tidied garden with not a vegetable out of place, or a weed in place, with every furrow perfectly aligned and not a tie missing from any fruit-tree simply remarked - "How neat and tidy. That is very remarkable. The last monk who did just that had a complete nervous breakdown the following week."

Sensible cove old Dom. James. Time for a lie down and if I wake to more chaos then so be it, I shall neither protest nor complain.