The Boxer

My dear wife accused me of becoming eccentric today. I thought she might have spotted me writing down a lamp post number in my little black book whilst we were on our daily shopping expedition (she is still on holiday). But no, the source of her accusation was the fact that, during a two hour tour of the shops in Brighouse, I had managed to buy eight boxes. "But I like boxes", I patiently explained. "You're becoming eccentric", she replied as she made a bee-line for Wilkinson's.

I had in fact lied to her. I do not like boxes, I adore boxes. If given the opportunity of initiating my own religious cult, I would put boxes at the very centre of the act of worship. For me boxes have a mystical significance. They create order out of chaos : which is surely the rationale of any religious system of belief. You can take a diverse collection of disparate objects - pens, bull-dog clips, hearing-aid moulds, die-cast model cars, CD cases and spectacle frames - and enclose them within the systematised confines of cardboard or plastic squares and oblongs. That which can't be stacked can now be stacked. That which can't be found can now be found. Given the importance of boxes to my philosophy of life, buying eight today was not a sign of eccentricity - it was an extended act of worship.

Ever since being a poor boy I have liked boxes and now for the first time I can tell the story. Having squandered my resistance to the charms of boxes for nothing more than a pocketful of promises, I discovered that we were being told nothing but lies and jests..... But that is another song.