Travellers Tales

My principal task during the week between Christmas and New Year was meant to be clearing out my old study .  Indeed a skip sits outside the back door partly for that  purpose, as the  space (occupied by me for almost 25 years)  is being gutted in order to turn it into a bedroom. 

I am afraid I have not got very far, partly because I keep coming across things that slow me down.   

For example this little clutch of banknotes - with some loose change - are souvenirs of trips to Ireland, Spain and Latvia well before the Euro .

Indeed in Latvia, which I visited only weeks after its  independence , the old Soviet rouble was worth somewhat less than the paper on which it was printed and the best rate was to be had in dingy corners of the disintigrating hotel in which we stayed, where ex KGB men in leather coats produced wads of notes from their pockets.