When I started doing a little genealogical investigation into my own family I would often sit back and wonder what it was like to be a teenager heading off to the Western Front in 1914, or an illiterate coal-miner, 70 years old, still working down the pits near Manchester, or a young solicitor sailing out to Australia in the 1850s. These are some of the experiences of my ancestors, and the simple dates of their births, marriages and deaths didn't answer these questions. What did help to illuminate the picture was a careful collation of photographs, oral traditions, address books, old letters and so on. Even then, it was frustrating that so much of this material is undated - so it can be hard to divine the sequence of life events for any given individual. Two of the best discoveries I made were a family history written by my great-great-great-grandfather in 1873, and a set of memoirs written by an elderly, and still surviving, cousin.

As I began to accumulate information, I started to know more about my parents' early years than they could remember themselves.  And there are things we did together that now only one of us can remember. It can be quite astounding to be told what you did one day thirty or forty years ago. All this led me to think that it is important to keep records - even if you do not feel you want to remember everything, others who come after you may love to know what you experienced. And it pays to remember people when they were in their prime, rather than their dotage.

By the rule of 'do as you would be done by' I felt compelled to compile, if not an autobiography, at least a time-line for myself. I was particularly curious about the sequence of moves we made as a family. It was no longer enough for me to know that we had once been in Ceylon, I had to know when, for how long, and why.

So I began piecing together a lifeline for myself, which I then extended back to World War II. I included every dated event I learnt about mum and dad, and added whatever I could from my own sources of information - passport stamps, diaries, etc.

This led me to a very surprising discovery about memory. It is profoundly fragmentary - in a way that allows us to remember two events that happened on the same day, but not to remember the fact that they were on the same day. I find that extraordinary. How could I ever hope to piece together another person's experience when even my own was so poorly connected?

Now our older brother Derek is doing the same thing. He has just sent me the third installment of his life story, and it makes fascinating reading. He suggested that I contact our last remaining uncle, Uncle Bob, who still lives in England, and ask him to write a memoir too - his memory is apparently still very acute. I have just posted a letter in which I ask him to recall all he can, particularly what he can remember about his father's WWI experiences.

Who knows, if we ever find ourselves in the same situation as my parents, these records may turn out to be the most valuable things we ever did.