Dry.

It's been a dry day with a fair amount of sunshine. I remembered that I needed to check two tents we have before I donate them to the charity shop. They've been packed away for years plus there are 2 extra tent  pole sections which might belong to either or neither of them. I put the first of the tents up today and it is in perfect order, just a few mud marks on the inner tent. 

This afternoon I emptied out a large wooden chest  to sort and pack the contents. I've obviously inherited my mother's trait of keeping all documents, photographs etc. As well as many photographs and notebooks to do with her art my mother had kept stuff going back to her school days. All the more surprising when you consider that she left home and country as a teenager to become a displaced person/ refugee travelling across Europe and eventually on to Canada before coming to the UK. There were tiny photos of her classmates as well as other photos from the war years. Needless to say looking through all these things took up the whole afternoon but now they are safely boxed up. 

There were also things of mine in that chest; a whole school photo of my convent boarding school when I was about 8 years old and another similar school photo of my secondary school when I was a rebellious 16 year old. There was a collection of childhood toys and keepsakes including a piece of twisted wood about 6" long which sort of resembles a rabbit which I'm sure I found in Corsica during a summer spent there when I was 6 years old. (Should have taken a photo but now it's packed away.) All these things bring back so many memories which makes them worth keeping.