Faces ... and clutter

A couple of days ago I was going through some old papers. I have boxes and boxes full of them. You never know when you might need those papers again. And don't you believe there is some order in there. I stuff papers in a box until it is full, and then start a new one.

One of the consequences is that for years I haven't known where my insurance contracts are. But I know I have them, because I never throw away anything which might be marginally useful in some distant future. I still have my bank excerpts for 1964 ...

So, digging around, I found my tax declarations for the late nineties, some souvenirs, a box of medication which expired in 1983, and a batch of photos.

These were photos of the last five years or so of my professional life - I could date them because of a couple of well remembered events. As for the people in the pictures : one face in four of those who worked in my own department no longer carries a name. I simply forgot them. And more than two faces in three of people who worked in the same group have no longer any name attached to them.

I recognise faces, I forget names. For the record, I retired at the end of 2000 - not that long ago. I may have written this before, but one day in Frankfurt airport, waiting for a delayed flight, I talked for two or three hours with a guy I knew I had worked with. When we said goodbye, I had to ask him to tell me his name. Rather annoying ...

If you have had the courage to read this post, you will understand that there are a couple of words I sincerely hate and which are at the basis of a lot of shitty reality TV programs : clutter and decluttering. If you do not clean out your clutter, you are a conservative dinosaur and a danger to society. Well, I am proud to be.

No one, but absolutely no one, is going to tell me what I can keep and what I can't keep.