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Joy abounded, I can assure you, as I started that long-delayed task of “sorting out our files”. However, all is not tedium - there are surprising things lurking in the piles of “stuff to file”, especially when having recently moved house, things got put where they shouldn’t and remain forgotten and undiscovered.

So, along with the major decision that, per The Inland Revenue’s filing retention suggestions, we really don’t need to keep on to things like council tax bills from five years ago (or even three years ago), or many of the utility bills for previous addresses. I certainly don’t need to keep letters regarding to my tax returns in Germany almost ten years ago. So - for the first time in a long time - the “pile of stuff to destroy” is much larger than the combined “items for filing”. It’s been a long time coming, and it’s a good feeling.

Amongst the discoveries, however, were my birth certificate, a publication in which I was interviewed for work I did during my work placement year (complete with a picture of my boss on the front cover). Strange to re-read it, remember (roughly) how they misquoted me, and recall crouching on the stairs in my final year student lodgings talking to the writer for half an hour as they prepared for the piece. Also, a picture I rather like from Nicola Streeten, the “A-Z of computers” (examples of her other A-Z’s here), which I picked up (along with the “A-Z of cricket”) at Portobello market some years ago.

Ah well, back to the filing…