Before anything is written, a life's material has to be found, asked for, received and kept in order. Each engagement keeps one workbook for that: every source, every decision about what is left alone, every signed permission, every request and every letter. Here it is part-way through an engagement.
Everything in these pictures is invented. Margaret Whitcombe is not a real person, and her family, accounts, reference numbers and dates are made up. The workbook, its columns, codes, rules and formulas are the ones the work uses. Select any picture to see it full size.
The work begins with a conversation, not a search. A worksheet goes through each kind of material across the four places it can live: on the shelves and in boxes, in accounts, on devices, and with other people.
When she names one form of a collection, the other is asked about: the Kindle led to the bookshelves, iTunes to the CDs. Account names are written down, never a password. Each tick becomes a row in the engagement's workbook.
Each source gets an ID from the practice's reference map of more than two hundred kinds of repository. Its category, how hard it is to reach, the lawful route to it and its form are looked up from that map, not typed, so every engagement uses the same terms.
The tier says how much help a source needs. T1 is what she kept and can hand over or export herself. T2 is assisted: copying an old phone, or borrowing letters someone else keeps. T3 is formal authorization, used only by exception; she needs none. The pathway names the lawful route: her own export, handing over physical items, a device copy with her consent, a holder's consent, an institution's own process, public records, a recorded interview. P1 marks what is most valuable or most at risk of loss.
The workbook's first tab counts the rest: how much there is, how much is within easy reach, how much has come in, and what needs doing today.
Sixteen of her twenty sources were ones she could give herself. The right-hand side is the day's list: each count points to a flagged row on another tab.
Before any collecting begins, the limits are agreed in writing. Some things are never collected at all, some only if the person chooses, and some are kept as delivered but never read for the story. The workbook carries the practice's defaults and records this person's own choices beside them.
Genetic data is still undecided, so the workbook flags it before anything is collected. A payment file inside a book export was deleted unopened, and only the fact of it was logged.
Every signed permission is logged: the engagement letter, her written choice about the diaries, the interview release, her sister's agreement to lend the letters, the receipt for cassettes taken away to be digitized. Each has a status and, where it lapses, a countdown.
The phone consent is still a draft, so that session waits until it is signed. A request that relies on a permission that isn't active is flagged on the next tab.
Each request or collection session gets a row the day it's made, naming the source and the permission it relies on. The deadline comes from the legal basis for the request, the next follow-up from the last contact, and a flag says what needs doing today.
Three flags on the day these pictures were taken: one export is past its deadline, one letter is due a gentle reminder, and one company is waiting for her to confirm by phone.
The same rows further right: what came back, how long it took, and what was set aside under the agreed limits before anything was read.
Alongside the requests runs a plain log: one line for every letter, form, email, call or delivery, with a copy of each kept. It's the record of how each piece of the archive arrived.
Nothing arrives without a record of how it came: her sister's letters come by hand, with a receipt, and go back when they've been scanned.
One workbook per engagement, built from the practice's reference map. Its tabs, columns, codes, scope rules and formulas are shown as they are, redrawn in the house style so they read clearly here.
Margaret, her family, her accounts and her dates were made up for this page, drafted with the help of AI as stand-in material and entered in the workbook's input cells. They describe no real person, and no real client's record appears anywhere.
Every lookup, deadline, flag and count shown is the workbook's own formula, calculated as of 25 September 2026. Column letters and row numbers are the workbook's; some columns are hidden to fit.