The lies: Chatwin wasn't here, obviously. And the D300s would suffer bodily harm if you shoved a cassette of Tri-X into it.

The notebook: Bruce Chatwin was a well-known British traveller and author who kept all his notes in Moleskine notebooks. The notebook is a Moleskine. However, it isn't a Moleskine in the Chatwin heritage: that company ceased to exist in the 1980s, and Chatwin bought up the entire remaining stock. Alas, he died a few years later. The current brand of Moleskines are produced by an Italian company - so doubly, Chatwin was never "here". The books are still beautiful, though - my wife discovered them reading The Songlines and has been supplying us every Christmas since.

The rest of the picture: The flying-boat print is one of a set my wife gave me about 15 years ago. It shows the Boeing B314 Dixie Clipper landing at Lisbon after the first scheduled transatlantic passenger flight in 1939. It's the main reason I put the picture in here at 100% - it's worth a close look. Chatwin was born in 1940 to he wasn't there either.

The pen is a restored 1951 Conway Stewart 58 - another present from guess who. It works beautifully. Conway Stewart still exist, but their pens are more than I can afford.

The lamp is a reproduction 19th-century Lampe Pigeon, "guaranteed not to explode" and backed by a 10,000-franc reward for anyone who managed it. These were so successful that just about every household in France had one. We haven't tried to make ours explode, but anyway the reward was withdrawn after too many lawsuits.

The Leica dates from about the same time as the pen. I initially said that something was out of place, because the built-in Leica viewfinder is preset to match the 50 mm lens and the variable-field viewfinder perched on top would be redundant. However, if someone were swapping lenses its quite feasible he would leave it on - and in fact, I had it on here because the built-in viewfinder on this particular camera is kaputt.

So that's about it, other than the photographs, which are of my mother in the 1920s. She was quite a beauty, but I covered most of her face here to add a wee bit of mystery. And because she's mine.

She wasn't on the plane either, but she did have a Conway Stewart.