MY NAME IS Hilarie and I am a hoarder.

I know this for a fact because this week we have been packing up our desks for the move to The Examiner’s new home in Bradley.

It has been an interesting few days as we’ve delved deeply into drawers crammed with papers and letters, trinkets and mementoes, paperclips and photographs, including one of me with Cynthia Payne, the woman who hit the headlines in the Seventies when police raided her home to find a sex party in full swing, attended by middle-aged and elderly men exchanging luncheon vouchers for sexual entertainment.

Many other amusing discoveries have been made, mostly of the photographic variety, and we have filled countless bin bags and skips with the detritus of office life.

Within the recesses of my bottom drawer I unearthed a box full of ribbons, all carefully removed from press releases and stored for posterity. “My ribbon box,” I cried, as if welcoming back an old friend. “I can’t throw that away.”

And so it went on, with each new find more important than the last.

My packing crate was soon filled with everything from a bottle containing Egyptian sand, cunningly crafted into a picture of a camel; magnifying glass, whistle, three plastic rulers for which I have absolutely no use whatsoever, three pairs of scissors, several miniature bottles of perfume and a tub of hot chocolate to a decade’s worth of diaries, old notebooks and hardbacks about fashion.

There was barely room for my in-tray and folder containing much-treasured thank you letters, never mind important documents and work in progress, so I purloined a second crate.

I am now looking forward to unpacking it all and finding a place in my new desk for my important little belongings.

It would seem that we hoarders need our ribbon collections and novelty erasers in the same way that neat freaks need a tidy desk.