I have just finished unpacking a small but heavy plastic box that, since August 2017, has rested untouched on the bottom shelf of the main basement storage unit. My guess is that it was packed in 1998, when Edmund and I got married. I have *no* (repeat, no) idea of what to do with the contents.

Said contents? The debris of my father's study, and his father's before him.

No fewer than five sets of professional drawing instruments of the sort made obsolete by CAD technology. A Japanese pen case containing an opium pipe. A miniature boxed set of the Book of Common Prayer and Hymns Ancient and Modern dating from the reign of Queen Victoria, inscribed to my father's uncle Alfred. A box that once contained Laura Secord chocolates, now stuffed with loose Canadian medals from the Second World War and miscellaneous military and military-adjacent junk jewellery. A Victorian photo album from which the carte-de-visite-type photos have been removed. A tiny pocket diary dated 1842, the year my great-great-grandfather arrived in Montreal from London, with notes I can't read without strong light and a magnifier. The stamp with which *his* father sealed the port he imported to England from Portugal. A pair of Edwardian opera glasses in a sharkskin case, as good today as a century ago. The carved blocks of wood from which Granddad made a series of art prints of English scenes, using a Japanese technique. And so on.

Now what do I do? I am strongly tempted to pack them right back up again!