It's time to divvy up. The cash economy is where all us addicts end up. Collecting is a mug's game. Faster than a cash machine in downtown Nicosia, I am emptying out my cabinets in an effort to maintain fiscal responsibility. I'm doing what all collectors do when they see the light: selling up; deploying loss leaders (for example, an 1845 figure of Wesley in the pulpit surrounded by putti and gothic scrolls - "come and get him while stocks last!") and hopefully offloading old bits of china.

Tomorrow morning I become a "casual trader" specialising in 18th-century ceramics, my late uncle's tailored suits and handmade shirts from Jermyn Street, old amps and vinyl and anything else I can find, divvy or scrounge along the way — like a replica, full-size skeleton and 14 vintage Barbie dolls plus wardrobes and other essential accoutrements. I shall turn up outside Roly's cafe in Thorpe Close and ask for Danny. He will guide me to a vacant lot where I shall set up probably next to a stall selling windup gramophones, needles, postcards, old letters, stamps and other ephemera — my favourite things. Oh dear, I've spotted another bargain and I haven't even got there, let alone started selling off the last lot. 

The past has a romance that I cannot resist. My latest MS revelled in it so much that I forgot to put myself in my own memoir. A fault that has been rectified, one year later. That's how long it took me to disentangle myself from the arms of siren dead. As I found my way into my story I could see my editor's point. There was an awful lot about my forebears and ye olde times, but the "I" of my story crumbled under the rubbly remains of the past. Perhaps as a result of this endless literary recreation of what has gone, chancing upon relics becomes a way of making art without the hassle of having to write it. Shopping as artistic endeavour is a new one even to me but this is what it feels like. Rescue and retrieve the past; make it my own and feel myself come alive in its musky aroma. Wikipedia calls it oniomania, and cites Imelda Marcos as a notable sufferer. It's good to know I'm not alone.