October 2015 Extra

The theme of the Memory Café Extra meeting on October 19 was ‘Home Sweet Home’. Guests watched a reminiscence DVD showing scenes from domestic life in the 1950’s and 60’s. Those were the days of milk bottles delivered by friendly milkmen (hopefully not too friendly), kitchen mangles and launderettes. It was the beginning of the domestic revolution with the appearance of appliances such as twin tub washing machines, upright vacuum cleaners and steam irons. It was interesting to compare these with the ‘state of the art’ appliances of today. In reality not a lot has changed very much in 50 years. What has changed is the prevailing attitude to women who were depicted as spending much of their time doing housework and attending to the creature comforts of their men folk who mostly sat around smoking and grumbling. Now there is much less smoking!

The film was followed by a brief quiz to find out who had managed to stay awake. Then there was tea and home made cakes followed by a game of Dog Bingo. This is the same as Bird Bingo but uses pictures of familiar and obscure breeds of dog. It is considerably more challenging than Bird Bingo because few dogs have brightly coloured plumage with which to identify them. Nevertheless a good time was had by all and we look forward to the next Memory Café Extra session on November 21 which will be about the Music Hall and should be a lot of fun.

A welcome donation from the Bale Push Committee.

Following on from this year’s Crantock Bale Push, held in September, along with a number of organisations we convened at the Bowgie Inn at West Pentire to celebrate the outcome of this annual and spectacular event.

Our chairwoman, Joan, was delighted to receive a cheque for £500 from Nigel Eustice who is the Chairman of the Bale Push Committee.  As a totally voluntary organisation we are pleased to report that 100% of this donation will be used to support our cafe members and will enable us to continue with our Memory Cafe Extra afternoons on the third Monday of each month.

The presentations were a real celebration of the hard work and generosity of all involved with the Bale Push and we wish them continued success and heartfelt thanks for their support of our Memory Cafe.  

October 2015

The Memory Cafe opened again on October 5^th with a theme of ‘Harvest’ stirring up memories of harvest festivals, autumn walks, fruit picking, wine making, bottling and pickling fruit and vegetables, and making jams and chutneys – how different it was before we had freezers!

Memories were stimulated by autumnal displays of nuts and berries creating ‘nature’s harvest’ on each table, and if you looked hard there was a harvest mouse, too! 

We had a range of picture boards based on seasonal activities from blackberry picking to pickling onions, which certainly got us all talking! We also had our usual selection of puzzles.

To complete the first part of the afternoon we all enjoyed listening to John Betjeman’s poem ‘Diary of a Church Mouse’ with particular reference to the delights of ‘Autumn’s Harvest Festival’.

With our appetites suitably stimulated, we moved ‘next door’ to “Highfields” where a delicious cream tea and a friendly welcome awaited – a treat for us all, but perhaps particularly for our usually busy catering team who were able to join us instead of waiting on us for once!

Our next two meetings will be held in Crantock Village Hall from 2pm–4pm on Monday 19^th October and Monday 2nd November and new members will be most welcome. For more information please ring our friendly volunteers Di on 01637 830544 or Joan on 01637 831347.