This month we thought you might like to have a go at one of our puzzles. We often look at and talk about everyday objects from the past and present, and these close-up photos are a challenge for you to identify familiar items from new perspectives. Good luck!
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Although we won’t have the chance to get together with friends and family in the usual way this year, there are many memories of New Year celebrations in times gone by to bring smiles to our faces. Do you recall the excitement of being allowed to stay up until midnight when you were a child and linking arms and singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’? Perhaps you greeted the new year by watching television – ‘The White Heather club’ with Andy Stewart and Moira Anderson was always popular, especially the Scottish reels, and then the countdown to the chimes of Big Ben at midnight!
New Year’s Day has always been the time for new
resolutions – usually soon broken, but can you recall any you made and kept?
Another tradition, long past now, was the delights of the ‘January Sales’ when
keen bargain hunters would queue up outside the stores to beat the crowds or
even sleep on the pavement overnight! ‘Black Friday’, internet shopping and the
sales held leading up to Christmas itself has completely decimated that annual
rush.
Whatever your memories let’s hope that there will be chances to raise our glasses and celebrate this year too – even if in a different way!
At the Memory Cafe our hopes and wishes are that it won’t be too many months before we can be up and running again and we look forward to meeting up with friends, old and new, in 2021. My, won’t we have a lot to talk about!!
‘Christmas is coming!’ Well, I suppose it always is, but this year preparations seem to have started earlier than ever. In the last week of October, St Ives switched on its Christmas lights and when Father Christmas made an appearance he socially distanced and stayed behind glass to wave at the children!
With many restrictions placed on us at the moment there will be no large Christmas gatherings this year, but our Memory Cafe members, like many of us, will have fond memories of happy and exciting seasonal parties in their younger days. Local organisations, churches, schools and employers would arrange Christmas events which were such a central part of our celebrations: trestle tables loaded with party food and crackers to pull, games such as musical chairs, postman’s knock and pass the parcel, perhaps a visiting magician or clown, and best of all a visit from Father Christmas who called everyone’s name in turn and gave wonderful presents – how did he know exactly what each of us really wanted?
For the girls best party dresses were the order of the day – if you were lucky with sparkly sandals and new white socks. For the boys your best short trousers, shirt and tie and even a blazer – no jeans and tee shirts then!
Our photos capture one such happy event, held in Crantock in the 1950s – clutching their presents and balloons it looks as though this little crowd are preparing to go home and Father Christmas certainly looks as though he’ll be glad of a rest!
Perhaps you recognise some of these faces or better still are in one of the photos yourself. Maybe you can recall attending similar gatherings when you were a child.
