THE NIGHT I BURNT MY FILOFAX

(with creative thanks to Barry Humphries)










Whatever may befall
No matter how you tell the facts
I don't think I forget the night
I burnt my Filofax
Outside the night was chilly
but inside the fire shone bright
as my A5 Ochre Maldon
was chopped up and set alight!

I never bought from Staples and
I never shopped at Borders
But I ended up a scavenger
and something of a hoarder.
No one ever saw my binder
So they never really knew . . .
that it looked just like Chernobyl
and smelled like Whipsnade Zoo!

I tried to carefully open it
The smell just swept the room
I felt like Lord Canarvon
piercing Tutankhamen's tomb!
The pages were just bulging
when I opened it up wide,
and something really creepy
seemed to crawl out from inside!

I really had enough of it!
It simply was a mess!
So reluctantly I carried out
A Filo S.O.S.!
I tried to disinfect it.
I threw it in the dryer.
But the only way to kill it
was to set it all on fire!

It was time for instant action
with quick guidance from above,
I covered it with paraffin
and snapped on rubber gloves
I quickly lined the family hearth
with two layers of asbestos
and like a banshee lashed about
with a flagon of Domestos.

Soon a fire had been constructed
and I stoked it with my pen,
I threw on all the washi tape
from Organized with Jen!
Next went all my highlighters,
my hole punch burnt for ages
with a hundred diary inserts
from the Philofaxy pages.

Its amazing what we cram into
these little leather things -
a dozen packs of sticky notes
and a trinket for the rings,
some TODO lists I had printed
to make my pages pretty.
A hundred cutesy paper clips
and a stamp from Hello Kitty!

The paper count was massive!
I mourned for all those trees
whose trunks had now began to reach
a thousand and ten degrees!
The flames went out and higher,
The chimney was ablaze
fuelled by endless lists and diagrams
from my Filofaxing days.

Then in walked a policeman.
He said: "Hello hello!"
"What's this I see above your house?
A dirty great red glow?"
"Why not bung it off to UNICEF?
Now wouldn't that be kinder?"
I said "what self-respecting refugee
would want my 6-ring binder?!"

So the moral of this story is not very hard to find.
Its often so essential to be cruel to be kind.
If your Filofax is rubbish
and your nerves begin to show . . . .
Why not nuke it all to Kingdom Come
and buy a Gillio?