I DON'T go in the cupboard under the stairs unless I really have to. One good reason is that the door is only about three feet high and there's no electric light inside. So, getting in and out invariably means a severe bang on the back of the head from the low door frame (accompanied by cursing), and a lot of scrabbling around in the dust and the dark.

Another reason is that the place has become some sort of domestic Black Hole, capable of sucking in the odds-and-sods of a lifetime. The trouble is that I'm not really convinced that it's my lifetime.

How else can I account for the fact that, on the floor, in the furthest corner from the door, is a Second World War gas mask for a baby?

It's a terrifying looking thing, made of metal, glass and rubber and designed, it appears, to enclose the entire infant. I am sure that insertion into such a device at an early age would scar a child mentally for life.

And why is there an acoustic guitar in there, with only three strings? I never bought it and I can't even play the guitar, other than a very poor effort at the three chords involved in a church-type song which goes along the lines of "Give Me Oil in My Lamp, Keep Me Burning..."

And then there's a load of silverware that came from goodness-knows-where...things like cake stands, fish knives and muffin dishes.

How often do you feel the need to put a muffin dish on the tea table these days? I can only assume that this stuff was handed down in the family as various elderly relatives died, but I certainly couldn't swear to its provenance. I did take some to a silverware shop, where I was told, somewhat sniffily, that perhaps I would do better trying to sell it in Boscombe, whatever that meant.

And what about the mail order catalogues on the floor just inside the door? Like coat hangers and plastic shopping bags, they seem to breed in secret and the pile appears to be bigger every time I open the door.

The trouble is that I don't know how to get rid of them because disposal of household rubbish has become such a highly detailed business these days that there just isn't a place for them. And it's obviously no good trying to burn them, down the end of the garden, because the pages are so densely packed that only an industrial-strength incinerator would do the business.

Any lesser fire simply sends half-burned shiny pages, with pictures of ladies in their underwear, floating off into the neighbours' gardens.

The box of Lego I can account for. It saw regular use when our two sons were children, although I have to say that most of the regular use was by me. I just loved the stuff and would spend ages on the floor, building tanks or cranes or pyramids.

Our sons just used to click two or three bits together in a right-angled shape and call them guns, with which they would run round the house making that "Kkerr!" noise with their mouth which indicates that you've been shot and you should fall down, clutching your chest.

We keep the box and its contents to amuse the children of visiting friends and also in the expectation that, one day, we will become grandparents and will be landed with babysitting duties.

Perhaps most poignant of the contents of the cupboard, however, is a sort of family memento album I put together when I was about ten.

It contains various school reports which indicate what a brilliant young scholar I was (where did it all go wrong?) along with birthday cards from long-deceased grandparents, a fragment of my christening robe (I looked lovely in satin) and the first milk tooth I ever lost.

Altogether now... ahhhh!