There is a room in our house that’s ostensibly my office, but also serves as a storage area for random stuff. If Herself has something in her hand and doesn’t know where to put it, that’s where it turns up. Currently there are a few homeless framed pictures, a bag of clothes we have yet to donate, a model car kit, the tops of missing storage boxes and mail for various children who (currently) don’t live here.
Every now and again, I do a bit of a clear out to reassert the room’s officeyness: though in fairness I have a lot of things stashed in there as well. Books and CDs and random files. And a big box of cables.
The big box of cables is a shining example of heteronormativity in action. Everyone who enters our home – family members, friends, passing acquaintances – will always look to me if they have an emergency cable need. No one has ever asked Herself. Perhaps I look like the sort of person who will have a box of cables. Because I am. And in most situations, I can help. I’m also the battery guy. I have a drawer full of them.
I don’t know when it started, just that most gizmos nowadays come with a cable, but in most instances I didn’t need it because I already had one. So it went into the box; my assumption being that I would definitely need it at some later date.
READ MORE
Full disclosure: there are now two boxes of cables.
[ Nature-loving types will tell you leaves are a gift. Don’t be fooledOpens in new window ]
I’m not the only one: a quick google revealed dozens of articles on how to organise your cable stash. There are even people trying to sell them on eBay.
Every now and again, I wonder should I do a bit of a clear-out. I’m not one of those people who knows the names of cables, but there are pointy ones and roundy ones. Some of them are quite old. But some dull prepare-for-the-apocalypse urge prevents me from throwing any away.
And occasionally, that urge to hoard is validated. My computer is a few years old, but I recently got a new screen: and when it arrived I realised that the cable it came with (a rectangular one) wouldn’t fit into the computer. But the big box of cables came to the rescue. I found an old one that fit, and it worked fine. But then I noticed that every now and again, the screen would flicker. Eventually, I realised that this was being caused, bizarrely, by the gas hob in the kitchen. Every time anyone pressed the sparky button to light a ring, my screen would momentarily turn black.
It was, eventually, a lesson about the depth of my denial: because for months I wouldn’t even entertain thinking about the real cause. I blamed the wall socket, or the computer. Perhaps it was the internal wiring in the house itself? I couldn’t bring myself to think that a dusty wire that has been lying in a box for 15 years might be the problem. Finally, I had to suffer the indignity of buying a new one. No more flickering screen.
Yet this hasn’t changed my attitude towards my boxes of cables. They are still there, and will remain so. Two may turn into three boxes: and when the inevitable happens, after my earthly remains have been shot into space (I plan for a very expensive funeral), people, possibly some of the kids, will undertake the grim work of clearing out my office. They’ll come across objects they’d like to keep, and some they don’t want. But eventually they will examine the box of cables, marvelling at how much is in there, at how it’s a sort of time capsule: charting technological change through the 20th and 21st centuries.
Or, they’ll roll their eyes, slightly aghast at all the crap I’ve collected. And throw them in the bin.
