I'm back in Oxford briefly for a band practice, but I also took the opportunity to say hi to my friend Helen, a History & German student who took a year out to live in Berlin last year. So she's now in her final year at Exeter College, living in the room I occupied for just one term in autumn 2004 (the one, OJ, with the biggest desk the world has ever seen - oh how I pine for it, so to speak).

And what a mess it is. I used to get the third degree at regular intervals from my mum for leaving my room in a mess when I was living in Taunton, and I still get a fair amount of abuse at my dad's for my propensity to build up a collection of empty Diet Coke cans neatly stacked on the window sill. But I've always contested that by most standards I'm positively tidy, and Helen's treatment of my old room must bear this out. There is a thin strip of exposed carpet leading from the bathroom door to the 'front' door, but aside from that the place is littered with things Helen claims are awaiting 'recycling'. For example, there are six empty milk cartons in one corner, next to a pile of used envelopes and cardboard, below a couple of unwashed plates and opposite a pile of books on the Holocaust (I don't miss my history degree, can you even begin to imagine the depression of writing essays on that). Under a wardrobe in the corner of the room there's a small pile of sugar that Helen says she's 'waiting for the scout (cleaner in real world parlance) to hoover'.

Disgrace! When I lived in Oxford, my rooms barely appeared lived in, as I'm sure anyone who visited them will know. One entire half of my last room was left unoccupied, simply because I had too few necessary possessions to fill the place. I don't do very well at keeping clutter, and whilst it may appear otherwise at my parents' homes, that's because things tend to get unloaded there when I move back, only to rot there when I deem them surplus to requirements on leaving again. If I only had the one house, as will soon happen when I buy somewhere of my own, that ruthless attitude will mean things getting binned or sold instead of things accumulating ad infinitum. Leaving stuff in an untidy mess does happen, but it begins to adversely affect me (my work ethic, weak at the best times, disappears entirely when in a cluttered environment) to the extent that it has to be cleaned. Empty milk cartons on the floor has certainly never happened!

I've delivered her a stern rebuke and promised I'll be back to conduct regular inspections. And not just because I want to borrow all the DVDs in her collection. That has nothing to do with it. At least they were arranged neatly, mind...