Yesterday I spent the morning putting in an application for a public art project. Today is the deadline for applications, so the envelope needed to be sent by special delivery. In the afternoon I agreed to do a job, one I’d hoped to be saved from having to undertake, but financial salvation is taking its time. I phoned up, longing for it to have been offered to someone else, but it was still mine.

Why, at my advanced age, do I still have this problem, one that as a teenager perenially made me the last student to deliver my school homework? It must be possible to seek psychological help, but shouldn’t I simply use willpower to stop this childishness?

The answer is probably at my fingertips, but when I look at models of rectitude and good behaviour, I am defensive rather than insightful. Other people may be good at answering their e-mails, but do they spend as as much time as I do clearing up? It is great living in a carefree bohemian household, but you can feel grumpy when the bohemians are sleeping it off while you are washing the stairs, I think, defensively.

I spoke to my mother yesterday, who told me she had spent the weekend clearing up letters on my father’s desk dating from 2003. My behaviour could be worse, I suppose.

Being a good bohemian.