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desperanceMulti-tasking is my thing, especially when one task is the TV; so I have just been watching Jonathan Meades hold forth about France - well, mostly listening, I guess - while I sorted through an old boxful of papers.
And I was doing really well - this to shred, this to recycle, this to keep for now - when I hit a stack of letters from thirty years ago, when I left Cornwall and moved up here. What does one do with letters from thirty years ago - some from people who are dead now, some from people I've lost touch with entirely, some from people who are distant, some from people who are still close? Are they "archive", if they don't directly bear on work? I dunno. I've kept them this long because I'm crap at throwing things out; now I want to keep them because there is an obscure comfort in knowing that they sit in the bottom of a box, that there is still a record of that stage of my life. But God knows I do not want to read them, and I don't see why anybody else should, now or later or ever. So...?
And I was doing really well - this to shred, this to recycle, this to keep for now - when I hit a stack of letters from thirty years ago, when I left Cornwall and moved up here. What does one do with letters from thirty years ago - some from people who are dead now, some from people I've lost touch with entirely, some from people who are distant, some from people who are still close? Are they "archive", if they don't directly bear on work? I dunno. I've kept them this long because I'm crap at throwing things out; now I want to keep them because there is an obscure comfort in knowing that they sit in the bottom of a box, that there is still a record of that stage of my life. But God knows I do not want to read them, and I don't see why anybody else should, now or later or ever. So...?