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.
