Tonight, I’ve been doing some much-needed sorting in the flat (it’s no longer exclusively my domain now, after all). The main target was long-standing piles of all sorts under my bed, and – as is the case when you sort through stuff you’ve forgotten about – I made one or two really interesting discoveries.

I found, for instance, my photos from the big travels Niall and I embarked upon in the autumn of 2001 after university. Back in the pre-digital days (for me, anyway), my photos all got developed, regardless of quality, and it was a novelty to thumb through actual photos in my hand, even if most were blurred or worse. It was a nice trip down memory lane, cramming in three and a half months’ travelling through over a dozen countries into just ten minutes’ (old-skool definition) browsing; and reflecting on how much better I am at photography these days, surely not just thanks to digital cameras.

I also unearthed my photos from the 2003 trip to Albania, my last big pre-digital adventure and the first in the mullet quest. Both journeys – as core narrative and occasional flashback unrespectively – are covered in Up The Creek Without A Mullet.

Niall asked some time ago for my 2001 photos so he could scan them for posterity, so perhaps once that’s done I could upload a few to my Flickr and include them in a book-related section on my website.

All tasks for an indeterminate time in the future, however, as work will keep me very busy this week. I’m off to Skye tomorrow, Orkney on Wednesday, and Thurso on Friday. I should also, by the end of the week, have had a meeting to thrash out details of the book launch, received some wedding photos in the post, and seen more straightening out of the flat.

Roll on Christmas…