Persistent Clutter.

"We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded sleep." 
W. Shakespeare. The Tempest.

The PC was resistant, but with a few clumsy blows of a hammer, one or two screws undone, its memory heart  ripped from its fastenings, it looked pretty dead.


"Throw it in the river," he said, "they won't dredge it up there."

He saw that I was a little reluctant.

"What of its trace on the environment?" I thought to myself.

He had no care for pollution; his gestures were insistent.  After all, he was not going to be long there to answer complaints from the council environmental officers.

As for the personal data-security question, nobody else would ever understand the filing.

"What the hell!" I swore under my breath.

With a vigorous swing, I heaved the hefty 120 gigabyte hard disc into the Thames.

It sank, slowly. The accompanying flottilla of Canada geese, coots, and miscellaneous ducks looked on disappointedly.

No bread today.

Hours of painstaking searching, keeping, sorting, onto:

• scraps of paper
• floppy discs
• cd roms
• usb keys

cramming into:

• boxes
• drawers

slinging into

• bin-bags  

had become a pathetic annoyance.

A few months later, the house was empty.

I took a deep breath.

I turned the key and pushed hard to open the front-door.

It was hopeless, it wouldn't give, I came up against feisty resistance.  A heap of bloody junk-mail was, I ascertained, heaped up on the mat.

To The Readers' Digest, The Grand Draw, and collected charities, the deceased had not ceased to be.  He was, as if forever, a loyal reader, a potential chancer, a generous benefactor.  That no one answered, would not trouble them....ever.

Nobody had been there to sort through the remnants of his mail.

I stepped over the hearth and took in the emptiness of the place...

"Out of clutter find simplicity."
A. Einstein.