My passport, birth certificate and deed poll. New York bus tickets. The pictures from my wedding and my civil partnership. Some condoms, well past their use-by. The photo of that man from the thing that I went to with.. oh, what was his name..!!!
Theatre programmes, my autograph book: Hattie Jacques, Nigel Hawthorne, Morecambe and Wise - biro'd scribblings of the long dead, but never forgotten. Postcards of famous paintings, sculptures and artists collected from museum shops that negate the need to ever venture inside.
A card from my dead grandmother, bought in hope long ago, to congratulate me on passing my driving test. "I knew you could do it!", it says. I still haven't, but when I do, I'll read it, and know that she was thinking of me.
Letters from my brother when he was in Afghanistan, and my childhood friend when he was in hospital with leukaemia. One came back. The other didn't.
Wage slips and bank statements, detailing all the money I've ever earned, and all the money I've ever spent. Not the same figure, unfortunately, as I'm sure the unopened letters would happily remind me.
Buttons from shirts I don't have or don't remember owning, still contained in their plastic envelopes, shiny and new.
Song lyrics. Oh, God - the song lyrics. Teenage outpourings of emotional saccharine. "I love you like the leaves love the suns honeyed rays.."
Memories, contained in glamourous sturdy cardboard, neatly stacked like tidy corners of my brain. Put away on cupboard tops, and in wardrobes - away, but never far.
Oh, and
Shoes.
