The basement clean-up finally ended last week, by which stage I could well have gone underground by a metre.
But happily, the deeper I dug, the greater were the rewards, documents significant not only to my own life but to the life of Dunedin itself.
I am speaking specifically of a hard-bound folder entitled Hearts R Us, which I found underneath newspapers and a Fuzz-Wah guitar pedal not dissimilar to one used by Jimi Hendrix in the late 1960s.
Hearts R Us was a legendary semi-satirical Singles Club which ran wild and free for 11 months in 1994, and the folder contained all the newsletters detailing the club's activities during that time, 93 pages, many photographs.
The club was formed by Lou, a visitor from England, who despite having considerable musical skills, qualifications in scuba diving and a sterling knowledge of English football, Chelsea especially, had found little success with Dunedin's men.
Such was her desperation, she set up the club, filling its personnel coffers with a dozen locals, all of them boasting the social skills of an avocado.
The folder makes fascinating reading as this dysfunctional rabble went off to housie, go karting, ice skating, Forbury Raceway and ten pin bowling, retiring later to the back bar of the Empire Tavern to compare experiences and brandish scorecards.
Yes there were scorecards, a list of boxes to be ticked, from merely getting a Gidday to the inevitable Bingo, and, most crucially, A Future Date.
But none of the later boxes were ever ticked, the scorecards' bottom halves were relentlessly bare.
The newsletters are filled with tragic tales of rejection and unrequited love, plus invaluable Dating Tips which seem even more relevant now than they were in 1994.
When walking up the main street and spotting a potential date ahead, walk faster so you will catch them up.
Or, if it is a dull grey day with fog, wear brightly coloured clothes.
Art galleries are good, because people looking at pretty paintings are always romantic and mysterious.
The club enjoyed a period of controlled elitism, and then decided to cast the marketing net far wider.
No-one had found a partner after all.
A Hearts R Us member, let's just call him Shayne, had been nominated as a Male Vocalist of the Year finalist in the 1994 Music Awards, and as Shayne had been the club's most tragically unlucky member, it was assumed he would be thwarted once more.
So the club arranged a surprise party for him on the night of the awards, posters, photos and press cuttings all over the wall, his music playing.
The Otago Daily Times was summoned to photograph the event.
Ironically, Shayne won the award and on the top half of the ODT front page the next morning was a beaming Shayne surrounded by Hearts R Us members, holding a placard, conceived in anticipation of an award lost, Shayne, You Are OUR Male Vocalist Of The Year.
What became of these abject social amputees?
Well here is the thing, here is the huge influence of the club.
One went on to read television news in China, another is now in the New Zealand Rock Music Hall of Fame, and a third received $50,000 from the government for his contribution to the arts.
A fourth now runs one of the country's finest theatre/entertainment venues, a fifth has written six books and three collections of poetry, and the newsletter editor later finished runner-up for New Zealand Golf Writer of the Year.
And Lou?
The president who set up the club to find a partner?
Well, Lou found Steve at a club outing, became quickly with child, and dissolved Hearts R Us, heading back to Brighton in England, with Steve, where she still lives, not with Steve, nothing is ever permanent, but with his two children.
A cassette tribute song, sung touchingly by Shayne, went out with the final newsletter, 15 copies, and was later rated by New Zealand music collector extraordinaire Dan Vallor in America as one of the 10 Rarest and Most Collectable New Zealand releases.
Ever.
You know, stuff like this really makes a person think.
• Roy Colbert is a Dunedin writer.
