As I sit here at the computer, I am surrounded by my parents' papers, lying all over the floor like pack-ice. I have been tip-toeing over the various stacks of paper for a day and a half now. I've made a path through the middle so I can get from the kitchen to the desk. Although I have been filing mum and dad's papers for about two years now, everything needs to be collated and re-examined. Many of their affairs involve money, which they owe to others, which others owe to them, and which they have in several places. Now that dad is dead, several things change - pensions, life insurance, and so on. Other services such as his broadband and gas, telephone and burglar alarm maintenance, are no longer needed.

The picture in my spare room is somewhat similar except that there there are icebergs - four great white plastic trunks which contain a) photographs, b) books and masonic material, c) personal items and mementos, and d) gramaphone records and the x-rays and scans mum and dad have had over the last ten years. I've spent quite a bit of time doing the preliminary sorting of this material but, again, much more is required.

In the boot of my car I now have all of dad's things from the retirement home. That amounted to three big bin-liners full of clothes, a small portable stereo, a clock, a couple of wooden bowls, two framed photographs, and some tapestries that mum made. I drove over to the home this afternoon and picked up all of it. This is the last of several bootloads of stuff I have brought back to my place recently. I shall probably do what I normally do - leave it in the boot for a few days until I am in the mood to sort it out. In this case most of it, the clothing, will simply go into one of those roadside collection points the charities operate. I'l keep the clock since, even though I don't like it particularly, mine has recently begun to lose time. I'll keep the little stereo too.

And, having learnt the lesson of clearing out mum and dad's house, I have started doing the same at my office. there were complete filing cabinet drawers full of reference material I've kept but haven't referred to in eight years. In all, in one day, I filled an entire wheely bin with discarded paper, and rediscovered a few things I had thought were lost. It was, in other words, just like the house clearing.

Unfortunately, though, I was unable to visit mum today. There is yet another outbreak of gastroenteritis at her section, and they are in quarantine. The last time I saw her was the day dad died, 3 September, and I must admit that today I really only wanted to go in out of a sense of duty, and was glad to have a cast iron excuse for not going in.