Hard Copy

I am beginning to realise, courtesy of an internet auction site, the diversity of things people collect or dispose of. It is a memory “super highway”. One person’s memory is another person’s dust collector. My bits and pieces are indicative of a wandering lifestyle and a confused mind. There are bears, books, country magazines, earrings and oddball items for the kitchen; all rather random, nothing valuable. My biggest weaknesses are photos and letters. I have boxes and boxes of them. When I shipped things from England, I finally got to sort through the letters, going back 35 years. Not one had been thrown out. So I returned many to the original correspondents – I thought they may appreciate them as an alternative diary of their youth. It was amazing the trivia we wrote about. At the risk of sounding like an old crinkly, I feel sorry for the younger generation, for whom letter writing is about emails. I doubt that they will be kept 35 years on the hard drive!