Once again that day of the year comes around when I gather up all the bits and pieces from one of my previous travels, order it, catalogue it, mount it then file it in a binder. This is the closest I come to obsessive compulsive, but for the past five years it has been a bit of a ritual, and I notice from year to year the date I tackle this job gets further and further away from when I took the trip. This, of course, is not ideal. You start to forget things. But it also makes the process more enjoyable as you stumble back across all those little things that had completely slipped your mind.

The main bulk of each of these folders I compile is made up of thick wadge of photographs. Usually it can take one to three days to mount them all up, depending on the size of the haul, which gets larger every year. Thankfully, after my US trip in 2005, I managed to cut down the number of photos I actually got printed afterwards (no one apart from myself wants to shuffle their way through over a K of someone else’s holiday snaps) so I just got the salient ones done. Unfortunately I wasn’t so pragmatic about Tibet, Nepal and India, and there is a stack approximately two inches tall on my desk, yet to be tackled.

I would place the photos in slip-in albums, but the cost is prohibitive for what you get and you still have to put them in order. A maximum of 60-80 photos per album usually at between £15 to £25 a pop means that I’d be looking in the region of £250 to mount them up (let alone the cost of the photos), and that would span 10 thickly bound volumes. No, instead I mount them in plastic sleeves with self-adhesive photo corners, which of course also gives me room to insert things like tickets, leaflets, notes etc etc and can usually get it down to one heaving volume. It is a miracle of patience I’ve ever completed one, let alone five - and by the end of the day you are guaranteed a headache from the concentration. That’s why I only go proper-travelling once a year.

I’ve just completed Japan & Australia (2006), but have yet to tackle the latest batch and it’s quite daunting. Maybe I’ll leave that one another year…