Now that I’m in my 90s, my thoughts increasingly hover around what I shall leave behind and what will become of it. As is typical of middle-class women who’ve had a career, there is a good deal of stuff: property, goods and chattels accumulated over decades, much of it now gathering dust in cupboards and corners, waiting to go. But where? And who decides?
I have already disposed of what are considered “significant papers” to the British Library. Of the rest, I have a proprietorial wish to in some way control what happens to things I have loved: I imagine favourite books going to favourite people and attractive jewellery hanging round attractive necks. I know such things can give genuine pleasure as I have myself inherited such. Yes, time to draw up the lists.
