It is intriguing to look for themes, threads and patterns when working with diverse community groups in an area. Are there elements that seem to preoccupy the imaginations and creative streams of the people within a community? What are the images that participants seem to return to with regularity? There are several that have cropped up a lot through this project. A couple of very tangible things being the frequent mention of the vanilla slices from Tootles - (they sound utterly delicious) and the cinemas on Sandy Lane. I've included a story at the end of this post about the cinema that had us all in fits of giggles.
However, many of the narratives that have come out of the workshops I have been running around the Sandy Lane area have had elements of gardening, nurturing plants and the importance of the agricultural aspect of the area. Here are a handful of stories shared at Beacon View Residential home that really touched me in this regard. This has been such a common thread across all the workshops that I feel it is important to incorporate it into the overarching narrative for the project that I am writing. The metaphor of a mature garden, that needs tending and nurturing over the generations, and that brings joy and sustenance to the local community feels pertinent. Plants that we delight in - plants that bring rewards from the local Dahlias grown for exhibition in Ivy's extract below, to plants that provide food and livelihood for local people like the peas in Marion's story and the potatoes and carrots in Elsie's story of being a land girl.
We used to go on the pea wagon, to the farm picking peas. The wagon was open at the back and they took us out to the field and then took us back at night.One of us had to stay at home doing the cleaning and cooking, one had to go and help. We had these hampers and we had to pick these peas. And we’d come home and we’d just be all green because we’d be eating them all.Marion
From age 18 I was in the land army. I’d milk cows, sieve it, put it in bottles and take it in the horse and cart around the streets. First, I was in the Lake District on a farm, then I got to Burscough, and I was with the potatoes and carrots and cauliflowers. My friend, Rachel Knappett, wrote ‘A Pullet on the Midden’ about being in the Women's Land Army.We had a man live near us who grew marrows. And when we were younger he’d let us write our names on them, little, and it grew and grew and grew until it had the big name on it. It was lovely!Elsie
We had an allotment where we used to grow flowers for the flower show. Dahlias, and you dared touch one of those dahlias, you were dead. We used to sell them for about half a crown each. We used to grow carrots, too. And I’d pull them up to see how big they were. To see if they were fit for eating. And if they weren’t I'd try and push them back in. My husband was a chairman of the Skem Allotment Society and he looked after the allotments for the council, collecting the rent and that. George grew blackberries all round ours. There’s a waiting list now for allotments.
Ivy
...and finally, here is Marion's story recounting a date with her husband at Billy Shaw's Cinema.
Majestic was the posh cinema - for if you were courting. But this time we were at Billy Shaw's. We used to call it the flea pit. My husband and me, we were sat on the back row of the cinema, and he was like this, reaching down around his ankle. And I said ‘What are you doing down there?’ And he never answered. I asked again, ‘What are you doing?’ Anyway, then they used to have slacker pants than they do now. And he didn’t say anything to me about what he was doing. But a mouse had run up his pants and he'd had to strangle it in his pants. He just dropped it down his pants and he picked it up by its tail. Then he went to where you pay for your tickets and said, 'You can have that.'
You’d just be sat there and you’d hear all these rustles. You threw your crisp packet down and you'd hear them rustling.Marion
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