Passing thoughts...

In my office at home things are marginally tidier than in my office at work - but then it is twice the size. Along with Ikea shelving I have a huge old family piece of furniture designed by a great, great grandfather who was the city architect of what is now Wroclaw in Poland and was then Breslau. It took three visits from the removal people to finally get it upstairs through our bedroom window.
The glass cupboards at either end house some Stranz family archives - letters between my grandparents and their children when they first arrived as refugees in London and were living on opposite sides of London; letters going back to the 1850s in old German script; fragments of family trees; photos and bits and pieces including family passports with J stamped on them. I must one day sort through it all before giving it to the Wiener library in London.
The shelves in the middle hold old war time books, English and German classics and lots of old raggedy Penguins and Pelicans which smell of second hand book shops. And the drawers hide away my terrible tendancy to not be able to go past an art supplier or stationery shop without having to buy something. This evening I've just found some lovely cards I bought ages ago with wonderful quotations on them. There are lots of them because I always think it would be good and nice to write and never do - in fact I can't remember the last time I wrote a personal letter to anyone - what a terrible admission. So tonight I am going to write to my Mum and my Aunt so no more blogging for now but this quote from François Mauriac, written in a time before inclusive language had been thought of (in France that could mean last week actually!) - "L'empreinte d'un homme sur un autre est éternelle, aucun destin n'a traversé le nôtre impunément."