Last week at Writers' group we were asked to write about childhood toys. The topic triggered memories of toys lost and thrown away. I asked my son Jamie about his favourite toy, as I couldn't remember . Wisely he said it wasn't the object itself, but the memory of it that had meaning for him. This week our 'homework' topic is Memories - much too big a subject. Most of what I write is about processing, recalling and recording my past - there's so much of it when you get to this age! On Wednesday night I was lucky enough to go to a talk given by someone I used to work with at the Old House Museum. She had worked on the code cracking processes at Bletchley Park. She was in her late teens when she joined the Wrens. They weren't allowed to tell anyone about their secret work until 1975. Everything ( except Colossus) was destroyed at the end of the war, they couldn't make notes. How do you keep the memory alive when you have to bury it for 30 years? She didn't even tell her husband until 1975! It reminded me of another talk given by a member of the Historical Society some years ago. He was one of the last group of 42 men to be rescued from Calais, at the same time as the 338,000 were being rescued from Dunkirk by the 'little ships'. He was 19 at the time, and broke both his ankles in the leap from the quay to the deck of their rescue boat. Both speakers have had amazing lives since those wartime days. This morning I heard Dame Stephanie Shirley on Desert Island Discs, talking about her childhood journey to the safety of a foster family in England. She and her sister arrived via the Kindertransport. She was 5. I have been lucky enough to go to the Holocaust Centre near Newark three times, as a school governor accompanying groups of students. On each visit we have had the chance to listen the story of someone who escaped Nazi Germany, and ask them about their lives since. Those who are able to do these talks are now of an age where they too came here through the kindertransport system, and the memories of their difficult lives before escape are seen through the eyes of a child. As Dame Stephanie said this morning - she remembered the lost doll rather than the lost home.
