This past week I've visited a Memory Café and several residential homes. One home is having to close shortly and I was asked to visit and show my portfolio of photographs and talk with the few remaining residents, who are, understandably, experiencing stress and sadness with regard to their imminent move.
I talked and listened with individuals and also with two friends who have known each other since school days ( and I'm guessing that's eighty years or more). I was touched by their polite deference to each other when talking - they gave each other space (I do hope they will be able to move somewhere together).
We talked about learning to swim in the River Exe and dancing in the Cavern Club. About skills I'll never acquire: hand-milking cows, shorthand and making lace wedding veils. There was laughter recalling detentions given for unsatisfactory darning, and one young boy's help with the war effort. He collected fluffy seed heads in a match box and posted them to Winston Churchill on hearing that there was a shortage of wool!
Tomorrow I am presenting one gentleman with a booklet containing his life story as he has dictated it to me. Fantastic memories of life in a village between the wars, when the sails of windmills still turned....
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