Packed!

I finished packing yesterday and can now see the top of my dining table again. The boxes are all nicely taped up and labelled and their contents duly listed - bar of course one last "just-in-case" box that probably won't be finalised until the removalists walk in the front door on Monday.

I have thrown out a mass of belongings - clothes, knick knacks, letters, old course materials - over the past couple of weeks. It was a liberating experience but also an emotional whirlwind, as I revisited some of the more awkward, self-conscious and cynical (yes, I used to be a lot more cynical than I am now) stages of my life. As a wannabe historian and daughter of my mother, it is difficult to wantonly discard documentary evidence, but in this era of oral history I am happy to rely on my faulty memory rather than cart around anything but the most basic archive of my personal and intellectual development.