Fitty cent (1973)

For a while now, I have been meaning to go into the office at the weekend to tidy my desk and have a good sort through the drawers. Fellow members of Procrastinators Anonymous will, of course, recognise that when I say "for a while now", I do not mean weeks or even months.

Here is the desk beforehand and here it is afterwards. Just out of shot is pretty much everything that was in the desk, which, with uncharacteristic brutality, I consigned to the tip. A large part of what needed throwing away consisted of old chargers for long forgotten devices but there were several years' Christmas cards, too, and other bits and pieces I couldn't bear to throw away at the time.

However, I did hang onto the 'stapleless stapler' given to me many years ago by a colleague - a charming fellow called Stefan Tiemann - which will fasten together up to three pieces of 80gsm paper for perhaps two minutes, and also this paperweight, which I made myself when I was eleven.

At the time I was at the Island School in Hong Kong. One of our subjects was Plastics, which I dimly remember was run by a large practical looking man, possibly with a big moustache. You made the paperweight by putting in the base - the blue bit - then the item that you wanted to feature in your paperweight, and then poured on the clear top. This took a couple of weeks as each time the plastic (resin, whatever it was) had to set. After that, you buffed your paperweight such that you could see through the top and so the bottom part looked nice.

We each had to choose what to put in our paperweight and I had no idea what to include. Then, the weekend before the lesson, which I believe was on a Monday, I chose a fifty cent piece because they were about to be phased out and replaced by a new design. So, there it is, a 1973 fifty cent piece, as preserved in 1977. I have to say that out of everything I've ever made, this is probably the most professional looking. I peaked at eleven and it was all downhill from there.