I said on Sunday that I’d been thinking I needed some shelves in the front room – despite the fact that only last year I finally got someone to come and take away the unit which was in there, which had shelves and cupboards at the bottom and a smoked glass fronted cupboard at the top, because I thought it was taking up too much space. But when I started thinking about shelves again, I had in mind something that could go in one of the alcoves either side of the fireplace, which would be more out of the way. The study is full of IKEA ‘Kallax’ cube units, which I bought because they’re so versatile – they’re a good size for box files, jigsaws, albums (the vinyl, musical kind and the photographic kind, both of which I’ve got lots of), and you can get extra storage things to fit in them, like soft boxes which you can stuff with knitting wool, and internal shelves, and drawers, and little doors to turn them into cupboards… except, of course, mine have just got stuff dumped indiscriminately on them. I could fit a two-by-four sized one into that alcove, but maybe something else would be better?

On our way back from the trip to IKEA, my daughter and I dropped in at her Dad’s place, to pick up the grandson whom he’d collected from school, and were talking about this dilemma, when my ex said:

‘Would the ones I got from Argos be what you’re looking for?’ So we went into his dining room and looked at two quite simple, basic, nice-looking bookcases, which is why, on Saturday when I was looking to buy them online, I looked at the Argos ones, and ordered one from there instead of IKEA – despite the fact that we bought cheap furniture from Argos years ago, and it was always a bit rubbish – but hey, I’m not anticipating a spread feature in Better Homes and Gardens, so anything I can just shove stuff onto in the corner will suit me fine.

It was delivered, in two boxes, on Sunday morning, and in a fit of enthusiasm I opened the box and read the instructions. All looks pretty straightforward, and I was tempted to launch into assembling it straight away, then thought: is it sensible to start doing this straight away when there are so many other things I’ve got to do?

So I now have two large cardboard boxes lying on the front room floor, which I ignore and step over, and the cat is slowly learning to navigate around, or stare at until I push them out of her way.

Actually it wasn’t as spontaneous as that made it sound. I’ve been thinking I needed some shelves in my front room for some time now – more or less since my therapist commented on how little she can see of my room on Skype, while I can see quite a lot of hers – bookshelves, and pictures on the wall, and so on. But that is presumably because she sits at a computer which is against a wall or window and is hence facing into the room, whereas I sit on the sofa with my laptop on a stool in front of me, so that I’m facing the room and the screen is facing the blank wall behind me. In other words it depends on perspective – to me her room is elegant and attractive and mine is full of junk which has been shoved out of the way, but to her, mine looks stark, almost Spartan, and gives away nothing about me.

I still haven’t put up many pictures even though I’ve been here four years – I’ve mentioned this before, about the walls being two hard to knock in nails or hooks, and lots of people have advised me to get Command strips, which I did, although first I got cheap Velcro ones which didn’t work, then I got the Command ones and in the summer my daughter helped me to put up one poster and a mirror which I bought in a closing down sale, but I still haven’t done any of the others, mostly because I just don’t think about it. I have a nice picture to go into my spare bedroom/exercise and meditation room, I’ve chosen the perfect spot for it and written it on my to do list, and copied onto the new list whenever I get round to making a new list, but it’s still there because it hasn’t been done yet.

When I was staying with my daughter at the beginning of October, we went to IKEA and I bought a new frame for one of my Paris pictures, because I’d taken it downstairs (in the summer when I was thinking about putting them up), and left it propped in the hall because I didn’t know where to put it or whether I trusted the Command strips to hold such a heavy frame, and it was propped against the wall for a couple of weeks until one day when both the front and back doors were open at the same time and the wind blew it over and the glass broke. So I bought a new frame in IKEA and then realised it was too big to go in my suitcase, and I was going home by train and didn’t want to carry it with me, so it’s still at my daughter’s house waiting for me to go back again and take the car (or for her to drive here, whichever happens first).