I am currently reading Orhan Pamuk's Museum of Innocence in preparation for my second visit to the physical museum Pamuk has created, on Friday. It has got me thinking about the small objects I have that evoke a moment in time, and I realise that I have very few. I am in no way a hoarder and love clearing stuff out, but as I get older I wonder if I will want more of these little things to help me remember. A couple of precious things that would be pride of place in my museum are the two slips of paper Ville gave to me the first time we met. We were at the Amnesty International AGM in Nottingham, him from Istanbul and me from Yorkshire. Looking at them I return to that moment. Displayed in the photos below are an Amnesty International AGM voting card on which Ville wrote the name of the Turkish author Yaşar Kemal. I, desperately hoping to engage him, had told him about the Orhan Pamuk book I was reading and asked what other Turkish authors he would recommend. He wrote the pronunciation of the letter ş underneath. Now that I live with him in Turkey this letter is all around. The other slip of paper is the business card he gave me, leaving me to wrack my brains to find an excuse to use. I wrote Yaşar Kemal on the card in exactly the way he had in case I should lose the other. It is now one of the very few things that I will never pass on or throw away.

If you ever happen to read this post I would love to know what would be in your museum...