World premiere
The audience arrives for the screening
Tuesday 1 December saw the world premiere of the film, One Thing I Wanted to Tell You.
An audience of 80 people, including the participants and their friends, family and neighbours, plus guests from Wandsworth Council, took their seats at the Cornerstone in Roehampton and watched the first screening of the 20-minute film.
Seeing themselves on the screen was a bit of a shock to some, but on the whole people seemed to enjoy the film and lots of positive comments were heard.
The celebration day continued with musical entertainment and plenty of food and chatting.
The finished film
Blackout
‘The one thing I’ll never forget is the smell down the underground,’
Sasha and I were in Roehampton with Elaine’s group today for the first day of filming for the reminiscence project.
Today’s topic was war so there were war-themed posters on the wall and some of the participants had brought in magazines, clothing, photos and something I’d never seen before, a ration card.
Sasha joinded the circle and I went around taking photos and little videos.
The participants told stories about rationing, what they had to eat, about air raids and about hiding in the Underground when the air raid siren sounded.
‘The one thing I’ll never forget is the smell down the underground,’ said one of the partcipants.
I started to imagine people being stuck down there for hours, and I’d imagine without any toilets.
Many of the older people remembered being separated from their partents, and one of the women told a story about masses of babies being taken from their mothers.
‘I’ll never forget,’ she said, ‘these lines of babies laid out all together, with labels on them to identify them, those poor little babies,’
Then it was time for tea.
We had seed cake, which apparently was war-time food, and peaches with evaporated milk. Cakes were set out on cake stands with doilies. It all reminded me of my Nana and got me thinking about my Australian grandfather who fought in the Middle East during the WWII. I was fascinated by his medals and the photos of him hanging around tanks with a cigarette in his mouth.
During the break several of the participants conceded to being interviewed by Sasha while I took some photos. I got talking to one lady who told me how she’d come to live in Roehampton from Paddington.
‘When we moved in, to the 7th floor, they were still building the floors below us.’ she said, laughing.
She told me how her and her young family had started off in the flat and gradually moved on to a semi-detached and then a detached, all in Roehampton.
‘I didn’t work in those days,’ she said, ‘I had too much to do at home. Not a bought cake or biscuit came into my house.’
‘What did you miss most during the war, what did you wish you had that you didn’t have?’ I asked another.
‘My mum,’ she said without any hesitation, ‘I’m getting a tear in my eye just thinking about it.’
Who’d have thought a string bag could hold so much?!
Posing with certificates after the reminiscence training at York street library
For most of the day we sat on chairs in a circle and either passed around and talked about everyday objects that Simone and Elaine, our reminiscence trainers, brought in with them.
The first object passed was a green string shopping bag.
‘What kind of memories does this bag bring up for you?’ Elaine asked, ‘what does it remind you of?
Lots of memories involved, obviously, shopping, being out shopping with mothers or grandmothers and quite a few involved onion skin hanging through the bottom of the bag.
Mine were about yabbies.
As a kid in Australia we’d go yabbying in the summer, catching little fresh water crayfish in nets.
They’d be enticed into the net by a piece of rotten meat tied in the bottom.
Then the poor guys would get trapped in the bottom. After short wait, we’d give the net a pull to see if it was full enough.
If it was, up it would come and we’d tip the yabbies, live, into a 44 gallon drum of already boiled water.
Then we’d peel and eat them.
Mine I liked dipped in vinegar.
There are few yabbies in the river now and not much water.
Day One…
Today was the first meeting of the Wandsworth Film & Reminiscence Project team – Toni and myself, Charlotte from Age Concern, and Elaine and Simone from NHS Wandsworth who run the reminiscence sessions in the borough.
Not only did we plan out dates, groups and times, but we also came up with a focus for the film – newness - partly because we plan to use new technology to share participants’ stories in different ways. We’re going to ask people to talk about the technology that was new in their day, and new experiences generally. We hope to weave this in to whatever theme the older people are discussing in their reminiscence sessions.
We also decided to ask people to bring in photos and objects which (with permission of course) can be scanned and become part of the finished film.
We’re looking forward to our reminiscence training day in early October. The first sessions will get going shortly after that in the middle of the month. The provisional date for the screening event of the finished film is 2 December, but we will of course keep everyone posted about that.
The King and Queen leave for America
More from archive.org. This time the King and Queen cross the pond on holiday.
