overlap

Through a combination of circumstances, this last weekend saw me collecting one more carload of historic artefacts - there now remains next to nothing of mine that isn't already in my own house, beyond a last couple of boxes of books. So now I can put my hands on all my secondary school exercise books, and a few more loose bits of paper from my earlier schooling, and a number of my childhood Blyton books, as well as a handful of toys in various states of batteredness. Some of this stuff I know before I open the box or the bag exactly what is in there, and happily I know there's a couple of things best left alone until a day I feel especially ready to start going through them. Last night I restarted reading a book I was given for Christmas in 1981, a book I don't believe I've laid a hand on for a good fifteen years. It's a funny experience, digging through this stuff that I know intimately and instinctively, and yet which feels like it belongs to someone else. And while I'm glad the little boy all this stuff belongs to is a very long way away these days, it's also vaguely comforting to know he hasn't gone completely. One of the things I was particularly hoping to dig out came out light rather readily - there's a certain irony in how keen I was to find the piece of paper that's the result of a somewhat earnest twelve year old me asking my grandparents, of whom only one now remains, about their parents and grandparents, so I do have names going back a couple more generations than I ever knew, and as far as great-great-great-grandparents in one case. Some things I can live without, but it's good to have information I've already worked for once still to hand if I do ever get round to investigating the family tree.