I wonder, sometimes, if it’s a strange occupation, this semi-obsessive preservation of the transitory. But whereas for some people history is a few loud voices declaiming art and making war across the centuries, for me it’s a whispering chorus of laundry day and grocer’s bills, dress patterns and crop rotations. The price of tallow.
In other words, history - like the present - is made up not of Big Things but of many, many tiny, personal, everyday things. And how better to understand the past but to look closely at the tiny things of the past.
