Old PCs - where memories live (some of which should stay hidden forever)

My husband was just looking for the AOL cd for his new computer. He was hunting in 'the box of all things' (a must for every house) and discovered our old laptop. In contrast to current models, it looks and feels like a rather large paving slab. Husband wanted to throw it out. Not that I'm a hoarder or anything, but I said: 'No! It might have important information on it and besides the kids can play with it or we could sell it on eBay or get it recycled for charity or something else that will require a lot more effort from us than simply putting it in the bin.'

So I plugged it in and turned it on. Little did I know that the old pc was actually a time travel device that sucks you into a vortex to your past.

A few documents I have just found on the old machine are:

• my birth plan for our first son. Oh how the tears rolled down my face while I read it. What a complete and utter pile of poo. Like the birth was anything remotely close to what I wrote down. And as if the midwives even looked at it. Ha ha.

• the email I sent to friends just after giving birth to first son. Why, oh why, did I think it was acceptable to tell EVERYONE about the exact bodily fluids that came out of me during the birthing process? I now know that all women need to 'process the birth' but I think that the experts who say that, don't necessarily mean for you to share it with your entire email address list.

• Half-written business plans for the following businesses: One PR company (not my current one); Swaddleme (a company making swaddling blankets for babies. I recall at the time I even went out and bought a £15.99 sewing machine - only the best quality for me - and reams of fabric to make these blankets having never sewn anything in my entire life before or since); Nosh4nippers (a company that was going to make baby food only I got bored of pureeing my own children's carrots so why I'd do it for the rest of the planet I have no idea). I was just so desperately keen to run my own business (for that read: escape the monotony of looking after a small baby who just puked on me all day) that I came up with any number of crazy ideas spurred partly by sleep deprivation.

• The opening paragraphs or initial chapters of the following books I had begun to write: 'Help! My baby hasn't read the book!'; 'Princess Lulubelle and the Magic Rainbow'; 'Diary of a new mother'; 'The Startling Reality of Being Ordinary'. None got further than two pages in - probably interrupted by the need to feed a small child. But again, showing my brain's inability to accept being nothing else other than a person who wipes small bottoms for a living. And reinforcing the fact that I am a starter, rather than a finisher.

• A powerpoint presentation from my days of doing the PR for the IBM Storage account in the USA. It was a BBL (an acronym for a Brown Bag Lunch - an American term for giving your colleagues a short, snappy educational overview on something you're working on but which they will find very dull and would prefer to be having their lunch somewhere in a deli). It was cleverly called 'Stor Wars' and had the theme music and graphics from Star Wars. It had lots of corny references to 'The force being strong' and 'the mothership of all storage devices'. I obviously thought I was really hilarious back in my geek storage PR days.

• Emails from my bridezilla months when I was trying to organise THE MOST PERFECT WEDDING EVER, except that I wasn't living on the same continent as any of the guests or the wedding venue (which incidentally was in a remote part of South Africa and utterly incapable of keeping up with my New York City standards).

• Photographs of my husband and I from days before we were married and well before we had children. We look so young, so unwrinkled, so thin, so completely unaware of how a few short years would change us into haggard old farts without social lives.

It's time I stop looking at the old pc now because I don't think it's good for my self esteem. But one day when I'm bolstered by a glass of wine or two, I might revisit it. And possibly even finish some of those books. Or perhaps add just a line or two more.