An Orderly Man (1983)

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I am an orderly man. I say this with no sense of false modesty, or of conceit. It is a simple statement of fact. That’s all. Being orderly, as a matter of fact, can be excessively tiresome and it often irritates me greatly, but I cannot pull away. I sometimes think that l would far prefer to live slumped in some attic amidst a litter of junk, dirty underclothing, greasy pots and pans, paints and canvases strewn about everywhere, an on-the-point-of-being-discarded mistress weeping dejectedly on the stairs. fungus on the walls, and an enormous overdraft at the bank or, better still, absolutely no money at all. Unvarnished, music- less, Puccini.

But it just wouldn’t work for me. I have to live in an orderly manner; I’d tidy up the attic in a flash, scrub the pots and pans, stack the canvases, exterminate the fungus, label the paints and send the mistress back to her mother. Or husband. And keep what money I had, as frugally as a miser, in a sock beneath my mattress. Orderly is what I am. You only have to see my plate at table, when l have dealt with asparagus, kippers or an artichoke, to know this: neat bundles of chewed stalks; bones and skin precisely laid aside in immaculate little blocks; tidy piles of leaves stacked as carefully as Dresden saucers.

All this is done quite unconsciously. I am not aware that I discard my rubbish in so fastidious, not to say elegant, a fashion. It simply happens. T here they are. No scattered heaps of detritus or masticated vegetable matter. Neat, tidy, organised packets on a pristine platter. I often wonder, why? I look with quiet astonishment at my contribution to the dustbins.

What instinct makes me behave in this extraordinary fashion? Is it something which l have inherited from my father: a man who was always correct, contained , persistent and fully planned all his life? Or is it some hideous subconscious fault which a psychiatrist would hold against me as a sign of some monstrous flaw in my otherwise apparently serene make-up. God knows. But it is always there, and it has ruled my life from my earliest days. Precision, order, plan.