PEOPLE are born in two types: Tidy and relaxed.

Surrounding me I have scattered bunches of receipts testifying to the purchase of a banana back in 1991, enough piles of small change to boost the economy of a small country and my clothes, unfamiliar with the concept of 'piles', huddle together in small scared bundles. I was definitely born with the laid-back gene.

And hey, I kind of like it. Okay sometimes I lose things --pens, keys, domestic pets -- but we relaxed sorts have our own kind of logic which means we always find things in the end. It's like that card game, Fish, only with personal effects: 'Now where the dickens did I see that umbrella? Ah, on top of the fridge!' See, its actually quite good fun! It is a different story for the tidies. Of course, returning objects to their proper place (or even having a proper place for them) must be time saving, but at what cost?

At first it's just folding towels and alphabetizing your CD collection but how long before you are straightening your soup tins and colour co-ordinating your vegetable rack?

Happily the messies and the tidies can often live in relative harmony, the latter admiring the former's devil-may-care approach to ironing, the former knocked out by the latter's detailed inventory of the contents of the laundry basket.

That is, they can co-exist on a platonic level. I'm not so sure about a romantic one. It's all very well being amused by another person's peccadilloes but its quite another to find your night of passion cut short by the sight of a week-old pair of boxers hanging off a mug tree.

Miraculously this is where life habits you once thought cast in granite are chipped away. Your mum might have sent herself prematurely grey trying to get you to clean up your room, wipe up your crumbs and refrain from cleaning out your ears at the breakfast table, to no avail. But when your potential soul mate thinks you're one step down the charm ladder from Albert Steptoe, you'll be tempted to clean up your act. Similarly, while your prediliction for keeping your knick knacks at equidistance from each other may have delighted your gran, it is unlikely to convey the notion that you are excitement on wheels to your current squeeze. With compromise, tidies and messies can dwell in a world where the loo roll is always replaced but you are allowed to sit on the sofa without a layer of plastic sheeting.

But be warned. It doesn't always have a happy ending. If one partner continues to resemble an apathetic Stig of the Dump it falls to the tidy one to supervise, monitoring unwashed piles of laundry and washing up with fervour.

Soon you will find yourself on a dangerous road where 'partner' recedes and a mother-like figure emerges.

So, you tidies, be vigilant. The point at which you find yourself cutting the top of their boiled egg and refusing to let them out of the house until they've cleaned their side of the room, is the time you might want to look for someone a little less relaxed.