You have now completed two “trawling” systems for retrieving and selecting memories according to how they reside within you with nothing external to trigger them. It may mean that these are more significant than those that will be revisited in the next exercise. Only you can judge. You are now going to try a third method. Now is the time to dig out those old photos wherever they are. Also - any keepsakes or items of memorabilia of your own or that you can retrieve from elsewhere will be worth sifting. Medals? trophies? birth/death certificates, qualifications and diplomas, locks of hair? (once very fashionable), Christening gifts or shawls? These are touchstones both for you and your audience and any you can have to hand that feature in your memories could be valuable. If you kept diaries, scrapbooks, a memory box, archives, school reports, albums and any old cine or early video material now is the time to sift through and see what resonates. Is there something in your music collection with particular significance?

For obvious reasons, photographs and other tangibles conjure memories easily because they bring dormant memories to the fore simply by stimulating the senses. This process is bound to spark off many more individual memories. Sometimes, you have the photos or objects for reasons directly related to their importance to you but equally you can have them for quite random and inconsequential reasons. If this process is undertaken first there is the danger that the potency of memories invoked in this way can appear to have more importance than those that come to mind without such external stimulus. That is why this phase, somewhat counterintuitively, comes here and not earlier.

Of course, it is possible that these photographs and other objects will retrieve equally valuable memories and that is what you must allow the process to do for you now. Among them are likely to be pictures of family members now long gone. They are not just your ancestors but also those of the members of your own subsequent family who never knew them and future members of your family yet to be born who will be fascinated to learn something of their distant origins and antecedents. Anything personal and anecdotal as well as factual you can recall will have value.

List memories stimulated by your photographs and memorabilia as you did in Phases 1, 2 and 3. Some may readily be associated with an existing memory while others may have triggered new ones. Place prints and documents in a transparent pocket or envelope and give it some kind of memory reference. If you have digital photographs place them in a folder on your computer or tablet with the same reference as the relevant memory. You can also use your personal repository for this purpose.If you wanted to keep things in the same place you could print these pictures and place them in the wallet, too. However, that will depend on the number and your preference.

There is no particular order you should complete Phases 3 and 4. They can be done consecutively or in parallel. It may be that you have asked friends and relatives to dig out old photos or documents and they are yet to arrive. Proceed to the 5th phase whenever you wish.

N.B. Memoir Services can assist with scanning and digitising slides, cine and older video tape formats. Just go to "Services".