I've been looking through a lot of my boxed-up stuff today. Since my last house move in December I have binned so much surplus stuff that it's got to the point where I've hardly got anything to store anymore. Although I'm not one of these people who keeps everything I get hold of, there's some things that I will never ever throw away because there's always a overcast Sunday afternoon when you decide to remind yourself about things from yesteryear that you've kept stored in boxes. These things are mainly letters and postcards (I've kept every letter I've been sent since September 1995), photographs (I have literally hundreds), flyers, and notepads.

Photos
With the launch of my photos website I have been organising all the photos I've got and putting them back into their original envelopes. I've got a scanner now, so it's just a matter of scanning them all in and uploading them to the website. I'd estimate there's going to be about a thousand photos on there once it's all finished, although it's clearly going to take a very long time to finish the job.

Flyers
I've got over a hundred of these too, and I'd like to do something with these as well. I don't know if I could face scanning them all in - I guess it depends how enthusiastic I get - but it would be worth the effort. Flyers are excellent bits of art in themselves and, as far as I'm concerned, they always remind me of certain periods of time in the past (especially in the case of my flyers from Liverpool whilst at university).

Notepads
I don't have too many of these, but I keep the scraps of paper for a rainy day. I found my old 'Pukka pad', and in it I found twenty-six pages of writing, in letter-to-someone form, that I did when I was on holiday in Lanzarote. It was my last holiday - not far off three years ago now - but I'd forgotten all about these. There's plenty of rubbish in there too - to-do lists, phone numbers, addresses, doodles, shopping lists and the like. However, I also found some poetry.

Poetry
I can't say that I've written much poetry in my time. I only seem to be able to do it if I'm compelled to by events. They're not really any good, but that's alright because that's not the point.

I'll admit that looking through all the photographs has made me more than a little sad. My life is so much different to my life whilst at university, and hardly a week goes by without me being reminded of it. Big get-togethers, holidays and ex-girlfriends of the past... sometimes it can be a little difficult to look at. I'm always taking photographs because I enjoy having every little event in my life recorded, but I guess you've got to look back on them with a health warning.

I've managed to fill a bin full of rubbish this afternoon and empty a few boxes, so I guess that's a result. Anybody want to buy any shelves?