Take, for instance, my back catalogue of 'When Saturday Comes' magazines. Many years ago I started collecting these, always hoping for that quiet Bank Holiday when I would blow away the dust from the covers, assemble a scattering of pork scratchings, and tuck into two large bottles of White Lightning. Flicking through those mottled pages, I would smile and chuckle at those stories of old, recounting such arrivals as Forlan at Man United (via Middlesbrough and an agent's phonecall), and Collymore in the Daily Star's 'Top 10 car park attendants' poll.

But seeing as I barely have time these days to read even the new issues that pop through my letterbox, I took the brave decision to disgard a rainforest's worth of old magazines yesterday.

A good few years of footy life (not to mention financial investment) made a less than fitting thud in the bottom of the paper recycling bin as I cut loose from the shackles. But it felt good. I was cleansed.

I returned to find a bare area of my study - empty magazine racks that had last seen the light of day sometime back in 2002. I had stepped into a brave new world, of modernism, of online media, where the only paper stock still on show was the magazine that containing that tense and gripping review of Bedford Museum that I wrote last month.

So given all this, why did I wake up this morning feeling as though I had decapitated a part of my own consciousness? True, I would probably never have looked at those magazine again in my life. Ever. And I don't even drink White Lightning.

But to know they were there was a fire blanket to a raging inferno, a Pro-Plus to my heavy eyelids. Now what have I got? Matt Smith whittering on about the Euros on ITV and the early sketches of an elaborate homemade contraption that can reach inside paper recycling bins.