June 2015 Extra!

CRANTOCK MEMORY CAFÉ EXTRA

The Crantock Memory Café has now been running successfully for 18 months, held in Crantock Village Hall on the first Monday afternoon of each month.

In response to popular demand we decided to increase the programme by holding a second monthly session on the third Monday. We have called this Crantock Memory Café Extra. We consulted our members and decided to offer a different sort of programme, mainly based on showing nostalgia films and programmes.

The first CMC Extra meeting was held in the Village Hall on Monday 15th June and was enthusiastically received by our guests. The proceedings began with quizzes and games followed by showing a nostalgia DVD entitled “Britain in the 1940's”.  This consisted of a compilation of fascinating news clips and vintage advertisements from that period. It covered the Second World War and its aftermath, including post war austerity and the beginning of the Cold War. This brought back many interesting memories for some of our guests.

Then we stopped for a tea break during which guests tackled 20 questions based on the film content. The meeting then finished with some light relief in the form of a comedy programme from the 1990's.

The next meeting of the main Crantock Memory Café will be on July 6 and CMC Extra will be on July 20.

June 2015

We always aim to introduce something different to amuse and interest our members at the memory cafe, and this month we were delighted to welcome John Sleep from West Pentire. John is affectionately known as ‘The Gramophone Man’ and he restores, repairs, buys and sell vintage gramophones and phonographs - his workshop is an Aladdin’s Cave!

John brought along several fascinating machines to show us and gave a brief history of these forerunners of our modern turntables, CD players, i-pads and other ‘hi-tech’ means of listening to music. Although these machines pre-dated even our oldest members, the classic  HMV (His Master’s Voice) logo of the dog listening intently to an early gramophone was familiar to us all, and it was wonderful to hear the scratchy sound of an old cylinder and 78rpm records played on original machines  - it brought the memories flooding back.

Amongst his vast collection of memorabilia, John showed us early shellac records, named record sleeves from many retailers in Cornish towns, postcards depicting phonographs and numerous needle tins.

We were spellbound by John’s knowledge and easy communication skills, although we were not sure what he thought of our afternoon tea being served on cake stands made of old (but well-scrubbed) records!

Puzzles and games were suitably themed to link with our overall topic of the afternoon and included a quiz based on songs from the days of the Old Time Music Halls which set us all thinking and, inevitably singing.

As usual, the afternoon passed very quickly with much chatter, reminiscences of our past and plenty of laughter. We were reminded that there would be a further opportunity to meet up again twice monthly, with our July sessions being held on Monday 6^th July and Monday 20^th July from 2pm – 4pm at Crantock Village Hall.

We are always pleased to welcome new members so should you need further information about our Memory Cafe  please contact Di on 01637 830544,  Joan on 01637 831347.

May 2015

This month we were transported back to the 1950s for an afternoon of music and memories!

A ‘trivia quiz’ on that era invited our members’ memories of those times and led to much chatter and laughter – talk of schooldays, first jobs, holidays, fashion and many other topics brought the decade to life, especially when photographs of some of our members and helpers taken at that time were passed around.

Everyone joined in the ‘singalong’ sessions, before and after a suitably 1950s tea break which included a cheese and pineapple ‘hedgehog’ and sausages on sticks (very trendy at the time!).  Music included songs by the stars of the day – Elvis, Cliff, Bill Haley, Ruby Murray, Alma Cogan and the Beverley Sisters, and of course we all remembered the words!

With a bit of tuition we attempted a handjive and gave a performance to the accompaniment of ‘Peggy Sue’ by Buddy Holly - a song from 1958.

Along with our usual fascinating selection of books, our display boards and puzzles the afternoon passed quickly and proved to be a great success.

The following poem, brought along and narrated by one of our members, perfectly caught the spirit of the times and gave us all food for thought:

The Way We Were

Sunday suits and hobnail boots

Shillings, pounds and pence

Reapers, binders, window winders,

Washing on the fence.

Cold stone floors and open doors

Shirts that reached our knees

Horses straining, teachers caning

Conkers from the trees.

Corn in shocks, white ankle-socks

Lime washed pantry walls

Tinkers, hikers, sidecar-bikers

Calf length overalls.

Rationed sweets, third class seats

Trains that ran on steam

Eleven pluses, country buses

Morris Minor green.

Trolleys, trams and telegrams

Propelling pencil sets

Saying graces, buttons, braces

Park Drive cigarettes.

Trilby hats, pink-ribboned plaits

Paraffin in lamps

Cut-throat razors, navy blazers

Saving foreign stamps.

Aertex vests and T.B. tests

Cigarette card swaps.

Trouser turn-ups, push bike burn-ups

Bald Kleen-eze mops

Acne, boils, cod liver oils.

Mother darning socks.

Aesop fables, twelve times tables

Girls in Dirndl frocks.

We said our prayers to kings and heirs

As old gave way to new

And bells were rung when we were young

In 1952.

Following on from this nostalgic verse we returned to the present day with some reluctance, but perhaps we’ll revisit the 1950s another time – there’s still much more to rediscover.

Our next meeting takes place on Monday 1st June from 2pm to 4pm at Crantock Village Hall. This will be followed up by an additional session on the third Monday of the month, i.e. Monday 15th June at the same time and venue. This is a direct response to our members’ request that we meet more often and we are delighted to provide another afternoon of social activities.

We are always pleased to welcome new members so should you need further information about our Memory Cafe  please contact Di on 01637 830544 or Joan on 01637 831347.