I’m here, reading Agustín Fernández Mallo’s Nocilla Dream in a room full of books, paintings, a soundscape of familiar music and a spaniel, asleep on the sofa besides me. 

I’m clearly in a nostalgic mood because I’ve found myself focusing on the object in my hand.

I’ve been makring the place in the book by a simple wooden bookmark I was given by a student during my last teaching job. It is a handmade item them completed in their woodtech class: an affection action and one I was touched by, although I know the action was, in part, made in respect of the fact that they had no particular use or interest in a bookmark. But it was still intended affectionately and I treasure it for that very reason. My memories of teaching are not, in general, good, so I mark those moments where it felt that I actually had a place in the schools and had managed to forge some form of connection with the students I taught. I have strongly felt memories of students I worked with; whose lives I tried to make better by providing a human contact willing to listen to them, hear their concerns, take an interest in their lives. I have a “student incident referral form” tucked away in a drawer somewhere that a few students wrote for me: it told me that I was fabulous. That moment was all the more important for me because of how terrible a time I was having at that school, even if I continued to try and be my best for all the kids in my care.

These things, they hold memories that are precious, particularly when they refer to moments of light in times that I remember as my lowest.

Some people, I know, have little attachment to physical momentoes. And I’ll even often go through life without taking any notice of the things in my possession: my life is rulled by gadgets that occupy most of my attention. But catching hold of one object can plunge me back into myself, by connecting me with my past and with myself. Here I am, holding a very plain bookmark, and I am suddenly aware of how adrift and disconnected I’ve been of late. Suddenly, past and present align, and there, on the horizon, there’s some potential future where this object still exists, still pointing back to myself, to now, to then.

I could not live a minimalist life, even when my possessions, and indeed my memories, can feel like a burden. That burden, in many ways, keeps me sane – it is an anchor I can place when I need to check my bearings before I carry on.

These things I hold: they speak to me, they ask me not to flee myself, not to flee towards that which I am not. For a moment I can just sit with myself, and my sadness, before carrying on.