DO NOT, it says in the Bible, lay up for yourselves treasures on earth where moth and rust destroy and where thieves break in and steal.

I’ve never been good at storing up treasures.

This is not for lack of trying. It is more through not trying hard enough, or rather, not caring enough about gathering a great harvest of the things rich people collect and sitting on it like Smaug the Dragon out of Tolkein’s The Hobbit.

Yet it has come to pass that a huge pile of what can only be described as junk has accumulated around my feet over the years.

My wife Pip is of the same inclination, so between us we could stock half a dozen charity shops.

I have a shed that, many moons ago, I could call a workshop. Nowadays I can barely force the door open to throw in another fireguard, piece of string or bent screwdriver.

Shelves all over the house groan with books, photo albums, bits of carving and glassware and pottery, all of it with ‘history’.

I would hate to have all this stuff define me, but the fact is that I can’t bring myself to hire a skip and throw it all away – and neither can Pip. So we live with it, and it is part of what we are.

And not a bit of it is worth anything. We imagine that a burglar would take one look and climb back out through the window, perhaps with a broken laptop (awaiting expert attention, I swear) or a DAB radio that plays only Asian music.

“Don’t go in there, mate,” he’ll tell his mates down the pub. “Their telly’s 10 years old and every damned silver spoon is electro-plated nickel steel.”

Last weekend Pip challenged me to get rid of 20 books. I’ll get rid of 20 if you’ll do the same, she said.

We put 50 in the charity bags in 10 minutes.

It’s sad that the decision you make is that you’ll probably never read a book again. It’s not that the throwaway is a bad book. It’s just that there’s no time left.