I resolve to sort the memory snaps this year

Cruising along the N1 while listening to Indie group Cornershop's Good to Be on the Road Back Home, I was hard at work trying to convince myself that although days of lazing in the sun along a slow-moving Karoo river were over, all is in fact good.

But returning to our expensive, middle-class suburban home meant being in a car for a very long time. And that, in turn, meant I, while my husband enjoyed the ease and comfort of driving, had to keep our cargo occupied.

There is nothing quite like making communal lists for doing so. First list was of holidays we've had and holidays we still want. It's crucial, a good friend taught me, to plan the next holiday before you get home from your last one. One should not arrive home without a clear idea of your next escape from the humdrum of daily life. Even if it's just a two-day break to your neighbours.

But holidays are also important for creating good times. These are increasingly important to me because, sadly, I am halfway through the curatorship of my soon-to-be-nine-year-old eldest child.

I have to keep her interested in this family and give her many happy moments to remember before she absconds.

Next up was a list of New Year's resolutions. Mine first.

I only have one: organise and edit all the thousands of digital photographs of my children scattered on hard drives, memory sticks and CDs.

My husband sighed at the idea. It's the eighth year running that I've had the same resolution.

"Will it ever happen?" he asked.

"It has to," I said.

Besides providing the children with holidays and happy times with which to remember us fondly, we have to make sure we give our children something to reawaken these fond memories.

Photographs, said a friend of Taylor Jones of the Dear Photograph blog, are used to "travel into the past".

Sometimes the travelling brings sadness and regret. Sadness, says Jones, about what has been lost: "Children missing their parents, parents missing their children."

This is exactly what I want - not the sadness and regret, obviously, but, selfishly, the "missing" part of it. They must miss me terribly. Because I am already nostalgic. In nine years when she leaves home, I will miss my daughter terribly.

But what is the use of photographs if they are lost in the depth of a hard drive?

I'll need them in my dotage when these noisy, impatient children who kept asking, "When are we there?" are themselve listening to Good to Be on the Road Back Home with their own impatient cargoes.