What is it with people and staplers? Perhaps there should be an anthology. Here's (part of) another stapler review to pass the time.
'Me and a Stapler of my own' (From 'Paperweight' by Stephen Fry.)
...It's a Rexel Pagemaster. Shabby now, I suppose. A little battered and scratched, like me. My family laughs at me for hanging on to it, they can't understand why I don't throw it out and buy a newer, smarter model, but somehow I've retained a certain fondness for the thing. Marina (my wife of thirty years) says it means more to me than she does, and I suppose to some extent that's true, though she'd kill me for saying so. Perhaps that's why. This old stapler wouldn't kill me for anything. It's more of an old friend than a stapler. It forgives me my moods, my caprices and never exhibits a trace of jealousy. It just goes on being a stapler. That's a comforting, dependable thought somehow.
I bought it in an old stationer's in Gower Street in my first year at UCL. Four shillings and ninepence and thruppence for every fifty staples. I use it for attaching pieces of paper together.
You simply square up the sheaf and put it in between the jaws of the stapled. Being right-handed, I like to use the upper left-hand corner, that way I can easily turn from one sheet of paper to the next without the top sheets obscuring my view of the lower ones. There's a small plate on the bottom jaw; it's on a swivel. You turn this plate with your thumb (or finger) and when you use the stapler each staple will be splayed outwards rather than closed in on itself. I've never really understood what one would use this feature for, but it's nice to have the option.
I met Marina, oddly enough, in a small cafe just outside the very stationer's where the stapler was bought. We married two years later and have three children, Jacinth, Barabbas and Hengis. When we bought our first flat in West Hampstead, just off West End Lane, when Marina was very pregnant with Jacinth, the stapler came with us. Marina told me that there wouldn't be room for it, but somehow I found a space in my desk, and there it has sat ever since, though we left West Hampstead years ago...I sleep on the right, the stapler on the left. Marina has a separate bedroom. I'm not quite sure why.
Next week: Traveller and poet Millinie Bowett in the feature 'My Press-on Towel and I'.