Age UK: Buildings

 For this project, the Age UK association gave us the task to record and illustrate people's memories of Stockport for a book they were investing in. The topic choices given were wartime and buildings. I decided to choose buildings because I felt I knew too much about the war time period, so a challenge was nice.

 The people's memories, which we would be gathering, were from people who suffered from dementia. at first this made me cautious as it is a delicate subject. It drove me however because it was such a good cause. Our group were to meet at the Day Care Centre in Reddish on the following Tuesday.

 We arrived on the day and were briefed what would happen. It was a rather relaxed atmosphere when we arrived, but I still remained anxious. We walked into the room in which the people we would be talking to were comfortably sat having morning coffee or tea. I was casually put with a woman named Joyce and so we began to chat. Here is my anecdote of our conversation:

“He’s a figure in the background...” – Joyce

 On Tuesday, 11 December, I had the lovely encounter of a woman by the name of Joyce at the Day Care Centre in Reddish. Joyce unfortunately suffers from dementia, so the task I was given was to seek knowledge from her background through asking a series of questions.

 Well firstly she wasn't originally from Stockport, but from Leigh in Lancashire. She attended Leigh Grammar school for girls when she was younger and remembered having a talent for maths! She lived in a sweet shop with her family during the Second World War. She confessed sweetshops were a rarity and that living in one made her feel lucky due to the food rations. She also confessed stealing sweets from time to time. She mentioned that when the bombs fell she would hide under the stair case. The explosions never came close fortunately. She mentioned at this point that I remind her of a relative, but she could not remember who sadly.

 When Joyce became an adult she joined the civil service and became a short-hand typist for the building firm, Taylor Woodrow. I found it highly ironic that she was involved in buildings, due to the context of my questions. It was in this part of her life that she met her husband, Richard Howard. Not catching Joyce’s surname, I assumed the same as her husband’s. I asked what he was like and why she fell for him, but she sadly couldn't remember him. “He died too young”, she said simply, thus making Joyce a widow. Her quote that stood out was when she described Richard as ‘a figure in the background’. I found this incredibly poetic, moving and inspirational.