Several times a year I have one of those life-changing moments when I decide I am going to become a better person.
True, it is usually around 2am in the morning when I'm relaxing over the remains of a bottle of good claret (actually over a bottle of what's reduced in the supermarket that particular week - like everyone else I buy wine by the price most of the time, not by the vineyard).
Usually, this delving deep into the psyche results in a resolve to become a tidier person and get my life in order. And it usually follows a hectic period stretching over several days of having had to search for an important document.
This week, for instance, it was my passport. I know exactly where I put it the last time I brought it home and cleared out my handbag. These two instances don't necessarily happen in the same week but nevertheless I knew where I had put it and somehow it had disappeared from that place and found its own way down a flight of stairs, through a door and tucked itself into a copy of a book on seed germination (not exactly recommended for bedside reading but at my age you can't be fussy).
There it was, resplendent in its red leather passport case with my own initials on it. Actually the initials are MA because my son bought it for me at a car boot sale years ago and that was the closest they came to my initials but it's the thought that counts.
The last time I lost my passport I never found it. What I did find was an old passport belonging to my late mother and I then had a horrible flashback of carefully tearing up and burning my mother's passport which had been in the same drawer as mine. No further explanation is needed.
Now all I have to find is form Elll which I only discovered last time you can actually keep rather than apply for a new one each time you go abroad. So I put it in a safe place which isn't quite the same thing as losing it but as near as darn it.
I'm an untidy person. I know I'm an untidy person and I suspect I always will be. There are times when I work myself up into a state of righteous indignation and point out to myself that being tidy only needs a little organisation and anyone with a grain of intelligence can change their ways. I've got several magazine articles which say just this - if only I could find them.
I used to think that a personal organiser could solve the problem. Keep everything in one handy, leather clad handbag sized unit. Neat little pockets full of cards, information, addresses, telephone numbers, pens, pencils and bank card numbers in code which you can never read because you forget which order you wrote them in. Which is fine until you lose the personal organiser. And it's not easy to lose a personal organiser because by the time you've filled it it's about the size of a small portmanteau and you've had to buy a bigger handbag.
Handbags are actually my downfall because I do have rather too many and every time I use another one I just transfer the things I need into it, leaving the detritus behind. Which is why I find myself looking through 14 bags for one small piece of paperwork because I know it will be in one of the bags and it's usually going to be the thirteenth.
Tidy people don't understand any of this of course because they wouldn't have a selection of 14 handbags full of junk. They file all their receipts, keep all their old bills in date order, have bank statements at their fingertips and know exactly where their passport is and when it is due to run out. They don't, therefore, have to spend three weeks searching for old mortgage statements when they apply for a new mortgage nor do they end up paying £65 for a new set from one of the listening banks who have absolutely no sympathy with anyone who doesn't have a personal filing system.
Tidy people just wouldn't understand why you feel the need to have five year's worth of seed catalogues along with all the empty seed packets you bought over those five years in your dressing table drawer (actually I can't explain it either).
Part of the problem was that I was brought up with the top drawer. Not out of it, you understand, but with it. In our sitting room we had a large and very ugly Victorian sideboard with a deep drawer at the top. In it my mother put all the things which she thought necessary to keep. Unfortunately she also put all the things which weren't necessary to keep in it, so it was full to the brim with an incredible number of items. Eventually the top drawer became too full and the next drawer became the other top drawer and so on. But at least you knew if anything was missing it would almost certainly be found in one of the many top drawers. And usually at the bottom. It was, however, comforting to know that if you wanted your birth certificate you only had to delve deep into a top drawer, and there it would be, nestling between two old ration books and a copy of a 1938 butcher's bill.
This system only works if everyone understands it. If they don't, and you come home to a proud spouse who announces that he has cleaned out the top drawer 'for you', then you are in real trouble (changing the subject for the moment, how many ladies are there out there who get irritated, not to say filled with rage, at husbands who always say they have done the washing up 'for you' as if the dirty dishes are somehow your own personal property - just a thought gentlemen).
Computers have made things a lot easier for tidy people because in their way they are the modern versions of the top drawer. The information you want is in there somewhere.
There was a time I would have written this column on a typewriter on a piece of copy paper. Between the writing and the delivering safely into the hands of the print room all sorts of things could befall it, not the least a sudden draught whisking it into the waste bin where it had to be dug out hours later covered in teabag stains and ash.
Now it is ensconced inside a large electronic machine which I couldn't possibly mislay.
Well, not unless I buy a bigger handbag.