As Leonard’s letter to the family, written on Thursday 8 December 1960, seems not to have arrived until Monday 12 December (i.e. the day after Alec usually replied), and has apparently not survived*, here instead is a curious item that presumably dates from the time when Tom accepted the posting to Cross Keys. It’s terribly sad that he and Emily had to part with so many of their household possessions, but it was probably much simpler and cheaper to do so than to try and transport everything to their new home – and they may, of course, have been going into furnished accommodation anyway.

It’s entirely possible, however, that this was the event which produced the packrat tendency in later generations of the family – which is in turn the reason for this blog’s existence in the first place. When so much had to be discarded or disposed of, the desire to hold onto what could be held on to may have become more tenacious, which is the reason why my spare bedroom is full of storage boxes the contents of which I have barely scratched the surface of.

This is not going to be a small task, readers, and we aren’t even a tenth of the way through it yet.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

[*I don’t rule out the possibility of its having been misfiled into a different year, but if you could see the volume of these letters and the way they’re stored you’d probably forgive me for not hunting for it!]

[**As a lifelong editor, I want to go back and make that compositor add a comma after ‘neighbourhood’ – among other things!]