Assuming it was full of junk, I tried to pull the trunk out of the way but I couldn’t move it, so I opened up the lid and gasped.

Whenever the builder boyfriend is away I do battle with clutter. I’d gone through acres of horse tack in the boiler room and was now up the back stairs in the rabbit warren of rough-and-ready back bedrooms which haven’t been used since the last family, who also ran this place as a guest house, made their children sleep there to free up the nicer rooms.

The trunk was stuffed with scrapbooks with every single article I ever wrote as a political correspondent pasted in

The trunk was stuffed with scrapbooks with every single article I ever wrote as a political correspondent pasted in

When we moved in, the BB took a sledgehammer to the rabbit warren, which included a strange bathroom with no hot water, knocking out every partition until we had two big rooms that could be of more use. Then we filled them with all our old clobber.

Waving away cobwebs and falling through broken floorboards, I was rationalising all the boxes and crates full of stuff I’d brought from one attic to another over the years.

I had to start throwing some of this stuff out. Did I need my first guitar, my first ice skates and my old school boater? Old school photos, a box of recorders, for heaven’s sake, every kind of vintage cuddly toy including Kermit the Frog, and all........

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