Bits and Pieces

A day at home. I started out to try to clear some of  my mess off the dining room table. 

It is covered in old letters, photographs and all sorts of fragments of memorabilia (well, junk). The family default position must be 'I will keep this, it might be important'.

 For example -  a piece of paper on which it's recorded that my Great-Grandfather and his first wife had their banns called in Greyfriars Kirk in 1870 something: a letter in which a distant relative explains why she can't lend my Grannie £10:  a bible of my father's awarded for perfect attendance at Sunday School : and so on and so on. 

It's all very interesting, but why am I keeping it? It smells bad and is crumbling away, and who will want it when I'm gone?

I found an old portfolio that I thought would be handy for keeping the photographs in ( some of them are about two feet long!), and of course it was full of more junk - including old sketchbook pages from the 1980s. I've blipped one of them, as I didn't get any other shots today.

I did go out to the garden for a bit and hacked back some of the montanas. I don't have any inhibitions when it comes to pruning plants, I wish I could bring the same attitude to bear on bits of paper.