forget your troubles at the Memory Cafe

NEAALM101103D1 - Eastwood. Brian Fretwell outside his old shop on South Street

You might wonder: what is a Memory Café? If you thought it was something to do with memory loss you could be right.

Eastwood community group Chapter and Verse decided to find out more.

After talking to presenter of Millside Hospital Radio, Charley Brown, the idea came about to produce an hour-long pilot programme called Millside Memory Café (a virtual café) in which a specific subject would be taken from the 1940s.

Chapter and Verse participated in creating the programme and ‘Monday Washday’ was chosen as the subject. Chapter and Verse requested the assistance of Eastwood Writers Group, family and friends, and their memories were recorded on an MP3 player. Charley then added a theme tune and other suitable melodies, enlisted several Millside radio presenters to join in the project and from the whole, collated, tidied up, and produced a superb audio disc.

Two of our group members then visited St. John’s Centre, Mansfield, at the invitation of Angela Richardson, who runs a real Memory Café for The Alzheimer’s Society.

Activities included a simple, fun, musical quiz, from a variety of vocal and light classical vinyl records. It was a great experience, and for people of my age, where the threat of losing one’s memory can have a frightening significance, a pleasant hour or two spent amongst those friendly helpers was pure gold.

Angela, Andrew and her team cleverly teased out those special, half-forgotten memories and I’m certain we all left in a better frame of mind and wondered why Eastwood doesn’t have one too.

Concerned about loss of memory? Just go to Mansfield Memory Café, relax for a while and forget your troubles.