Colm O'Regan: These papers are precious heirloom of memory

From preserving postcards to my grandfather in 1915 to reminiscing over old football magazines, archiving paper documents is a masterclass in nostalgia

Where are your papers? Don’t worry, I’m not the border police. I mean, where are the paper bits of your life? Do you have them anymore? Did you ever have them?

I’m knee-deep in archiving. And by archiving, I mean, there is an enormous pile of ‘stuff’ in the house I grew up in and I’m putting it into a few boxes. Letters, photos, documents, ephemera.