31 July - Ecclestone

Darn, the one night I cry out from going to a drinks at the home of a friend of a friend (on the grounds of 'tiredness', do you need to ask), is when I get a text from said friend to say that Christopher Ecclestone is at the drinks since he's dating another friend of the friend.
Would have been nice to stand there and say 'But I think you're great since i saw you in Jude the Obscure many years ago on TV'. Or maybe not.

At the time I received the text I was busy shredding some papers from 1999 and re-organising others. Including the ones that show that my one and only £500 ISA (an experiment, taken out with Virgin over 10 years ago), at the most had earnt £50 and right now is worth less than £400. And you wonder why people still trust into bricks and mortars more than shares, though they don't fare much better. I quite like my 'loss'. It allows me to reply to any robot in a bank or building society who asks me if I wish to have an account or investment review, to go check their own ISAs and ask me again...

I was also busy re-arranging other old papers, letters, photos. I think the tide has turned. There's a point reached in life when you really start to think that this stuff, you can't take it with you, you kept it all this time in case someone needed to piece together your life (had you become famous as a talented something or other) and /or donate it to scholars. But... then you have to be real. There aren't attic rooms in your large estate to deposit all of these 'mementoes'. They have to go. Granted I throw one page out for 30 I keep but I try. But why is it that I find it hard to part from a tenancy contract an agency gave me ten years ago when I went travelling and rented out my property to two girls named Sarah and Anna? Or the paperwork related to a savings account thingie that matured and was cashed in 2002? What would any of this say about me to the scholars digging into my oeuvre? And am now so casual about the love letters and other forms of love communication that not knowing where to store them, they're in a drawer easily accessible by Toph. Somehow he wouldn't care to delve. The mystery we held out for each other is slowly eroding. This process of ageing means that I either know all there is to know about him and/or I don't care for what I don't know. Same goes for him, no doubt. Now I can undertand my mother every time I go home, presenting me with boxes of my life age 0 to 19 and demanding I chuck some out, which has now largely been done. All those cherished school books, gone. The diaries and stuff are somewhere in my storage and only serve to illustrate (to the scholars, not) that age 13 I had the same concerns/mind that I have now. Give me the seven year old and all that.
Tonight I'll tackle some clothes and attempt to consign to storage the tartan mini skirt that sent a few people, namely the doctor, into a frenzy of passion but sadly doesn't do it for Toph. Should really throw it away....