For my weekly writing spot on this site, see the One-Minute Mystic, with a new meditation posted every Monday. Also see The Village, the story of Misty Longings, England's most beautiful village, posted episode by episode earlier this year.       On the bus to work, I am forced to listen to someone else's music blaring. Not a good start to the day. But I don't mind, because soon I will be safe – safe at my desk, and everything will be all right. Or will it? Traditionally, you only lose your desk when you're sacked. You arrive at work singing a happy song, only to find someone else sitting there – sitting at your desk! The shock is significant, the pain overwhelming and the message clear: you're out! Other companies might do it differently – they simply remove your desk, leaving a stark and terrible space where once your personal empire thrived. It's the cruellest cut of all. Losing your job is bad enough, but losing your desk as well? Where now will you keep your stapler and executive toy? What's more worrying, however, is that these days, no one's desk is safe. Take the sergeant in a police station not far from you. He is up in arms, having had his desk replaced by a mobile laptop unit, which he wheels out from storage when required – and then wheels back. What sort of personal worth does that give a hard-pressed copper? They'll be telling him, he can't put his coffee on it next. And I wouldn't be mentioning this, but a social worker told the same story. Next March, in their unit, all their desks will go – to be replaced by mobile laptops to take with them, out and about. But you can't rest a picture of last summer holidays on a mobile laptop; and nor can you keep your wine gums there, or gather round it in fellowship and banter with your peers. And I wouldn't be mentioning this but an educationalist spoke the same story. Desks removed – and weedy little mobile laptop units hidden away in cupboards until required. The community of work she once knew is gone. You can't eat sandwiches at your laptop station – so no one works there anymore. While recession grabs the headlines – are we witnessing the silent murder of the desk? When all around is change and collapse – a desk is home. Dickens loved to walk and to roam, of course, but he would always come back to his desk at Gad's Hill to make sense of things. Made famous by the engraving of Samuel Hollyer, his desk and chair sold for nearly half a million pounds this summer – bought by a former journalist in Ireland. No mobile laptop units for his Wicklow home! A sense of security is essential for all creative acts, and this a desk bestows. I write these words from my own desk – alongside my Christmas-present desk lamp, and furry Dalmatian cuddly toy. Here on this wooden surface is not only my birthday-present mosaic pen pot – but the rumour of an ordered universe in which I have a place. We are travellers all. But every pilgrim needs a place they call home. And for some it's their desk. If things get worse, someone should table a motion. More writings © Simon Parke