What would I take from my desk?

The BBC asks: "if you loss your job today, what would you take from your desk?". In other words, what personal items do we have in and on our desks to make the long working days just a little bit more personal?

So here goes:

• University mug
• Mug given to me for my birthday
• Coca-cola glass
• 10 novels which I have finished reading at work and never made it home
• Contact lens solution
• Painkillers, spare tights, tampons etc
• Files of work from law school
• Law books which belong to me
• hand cream
• personal file (e.g. records of work/courses etc)
• photo of M and I on holiday
• fountain pen
• umbrella
• small pretty mirror given to me by BestFriend which sits on my computer

There are obviously a few other things I have at work too like mustard, orange squash etc but I think if I had to leave, right now, I wouldn't bother to save them. Likewise I would not make off with confidential client information, the contents of the stationery cupboard or any expensive but useful text books. And that's not just because by the time I loaded all of the things I do own into a box there would be no room for anything else...

The Times also had an interesting article about the wives of bankers/traders who gave up work to look after the children etc and now their husbands are out of work with limited options. Not many people feel sorry for them. Only last night I was discussing with M what conversations were happening in those households. One can only hope that if you'd made your fortune as a trader or banker you would have been clever enough to follow some sound financial advice, realised that you make a lot when the going is good but that it can all very easily be lost and so diversified portfolios and kept an emergency easy access account so that you could still pay the mortgage, school fees and household expenses until you found something else to do. Like become a maths teacher. There's a shortage of those.