Crowded house

In ‘Poetry of Departures’, in which Philip Larkin imagines escaping his existence as a librarian for a life of wild daring and adventure, he writes:

We all hate home
And having to be there;
I detest my room,
It’s specially-chosen junk,
the good books, the good bed.

In ‘Poetry of Departures’, in which Philip Larkin imagines escaping his existence as a librarian for a life of wild daring and adventure, he writes:

We all hate home
And having to be there;
I detest my room,
It’s specially-chosen junk,
the good books, the good bed.
And my life, in perfect order.
It is, he concludes, ‘reprehensibly perfect’.

I wish I could say my life was so well organised. In my study as I write there is a great heap of unattended correspondence on my desk that makes me feel guilty whenever I look at it. Press releases and play texts cover the floor, piles of newspapers seem to grow taller and more precarious during the night, and the whole place is strewn with half-drunk mugs of coffee, some of them sporting intriguing varieties of mould.