Guan-Ji returns from six weeks in Europe with triumphant stories of scuba diving in Greece and other such hijinks.

It seems that once he's recovered from his jet lag he'll be moving out a few days sooner than expected. To prepare myself for this I took a good look around the house to figure out what furniture will be going and what furniture will be staying. Initially I used a clipboard and a fountain pen to record the details, but this rapidly proved unnecessary.

All the furniture in the house will be going. Everything belongs to him. Even the mighty desk on which I am now writing is his. It's a fairly old, rickety desk, and it's being supported by the careful placement of a filing cabinet, but I've became rather fond of it. I therefore expressed cautious interest in, as it were, inheriting it.

"The desk?" he said. "What desk?"

Come now, I responded. The mighty desk on which I write Sonata for Unfinished Yelling. The desk of power. The desk of fame. The desk of triumph.

Pause while Guan-Ji considers this description. Nothing rings any bells. Eventually he says "I'm still not sure what desk you're talking about."

"Well," I respond, "the old brown desk with sticky tape covering one corner. The one I found gathering cobwebs in the storage shed. Under the bags of fertilizer. Behind the plough."

"Oh, that thing," he says at last. "Well, keep it if you like. But it's not actually a desk. It's a trestle table."

A sound was heard. A moist, bouncy sound. It was my heart, hitting the floor. Then another sound was heard. A moist, rickety sound. Muffled weeping.

There were other sounds, too, and all of them embarrassing.

Ladies and gentlemen, I bring you a tragic announcement. I wish to I report that the mighty, triumphal, power-accruing desk at which I sit is not actually any of these things. SoFo is coming at you from a mere trestle table. A trestle table that I rescued from oblivion, and watered with my tears.