Store Your Happy Memories Here:

[Croix]

Dear All~

What this place is for:
This thread is a tool, a resource, and also I guess a dash of entertainment.

I’ve found that when life is grim that sometimes thoughts of past happiness can create a chink of light in the grey overwhelming press of down. They can help occupy the mind with lighter reflections.

With that in view I invite people to set down a brief passage describing some happy event they look back to with fondness and peace.

They - and others too - can then return to it when they feel the need to glean a little warmth.

It is not a place for gloomy or dire tales, those can go elsewhere.

What to do:
Just set out, as simply as you like, your recollection of some past experience that means something good to you, something you enjoyed, something from safe times.

It can be, like my story below, anything – from an account of visiting grandparents to simply cooking and eating a melted-cheese sandwich in a favorite kitchen – you get to choose.

How to do it:
Write. Write enough so someone else can feel the mood, know what happened, find the goodness. (stop at 2,500 characters please!)

Grammar, syntax, spelling, punctuation are not compulsory, just write as you can – the only important thing is the content - not literary merit. Short or long - it does not matter.


I hope you enjoy, contribute and find a little distraction here when you need it.

Croix

[Emmy.]

You've heard them before Rob but I love hearing them. Nice to get to know each other a little more through these stories hey 🙂

Another baby of the family we are a special lot hehe xx

[Croix]

Dear Gruffudd~

Pryd ydyn ni'n canu Sosban fach?

With my voice? Never might be prudent.

Dydd Gŵyl Dewi Hapus!

Croix

[Gruffudd]

For the curious about sosban fach here is a link:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=p-TgTPv8brI

helpfully Cerys tells us the story of the song before singing it...

[Croix]

Film – a strange wonder.

Nain put on her cream coat, buttoned all up, put on her beret – with hatpin, and picked up her large handbag – the one she kept all sorts of things inside, some pretty good. She told me to do up my scarf and come with her.

We walked outside into the twilight hearing gulls crying in the nearby harbor. We went along Cybi Place past the rather weedy balding park to Stanley St, a big street with pavement either side, to where it met with Newry St. I held onto Nain's bag too.

Instead of going on to Uncle Bob and Auntie Jinnie’s flat above the pub, we stopped and went up the concrete steps to the Empire. Somewhere I’d seen quite often, mysterious behind sets of dark swinging wooden doors with glass panes.

Pushing open a door Nain let me go first, into a world of carpet, counter and posters. Posters of cowboys, ships, singers. She went to the counter and talked to the man in blue and yellow.
“One and a half please". Money clinked.

We went through swing material doors into a wonderful place full of seats with a big white wall in the front. Sitting down we waited. Nain reached into her bag and gave me a blackcurrant pastille to suck.

Noise, music, an American voice – The wall became a painted scene, complete with paintbrush.
This was my very first visit to the cinema, the film was "The Living Desert”. A marvel with snakes, scorpions, wild pigs and so much more. Music was playing, American voices explaining.

All over in no time at all, lights up. Nain took me out, down the steps and across in the dark to St Cybi St and down the steps behind the railing into the sunken Fish and Chip shop.

“A large fish and chips" said Nain, the man wrapped up the fish and chips in newspaper and we left, tearing a hole in the paper and eating chips as we walked home.

-.-

For me the memory of my Nain's (my Grandmother's) voice makes it complete. This was my first ever movie.

Croix - who will have to soon find a new coping mechanism so as to leave space for others:)

[Gruffudd]

Oh no Croix, if you stop I'll feel like I am being completely overwhelming. This has been a very healthy thing for me to do. It is a challenge but worth it.

I've been thinking of the power of telling stories and of hearing them told.

I spent a few months in a motel with a teenage boy who had violent outbursts that stopped him from staying with anyone for long. He broke the television with his foot. That meant I needed to find an alternative means of entertainment. So I started telling him stories of my life from his age. After a few stories, he told me one of his. It wasn't much of a story but it was a start. I told him a ghost story. He told me a story about the place the family used to live. I told him about why I don't have birthday parties. He told me why he feels scared sometimes even though he is with a great family. I told him about when dad came home from hospital brain damaged. He told me about falling in love with a boy at high school and that he was scared what I might think of that. I told him the story of a boy I knew who had told his friends he was gay only to find out they already knew.

Over the weeks the stories moved from the past to what had happened that day. He still had moments where I needed to step outside while he broke something, but those became fewer. Importantly he told me that if he could have one thing it would be to live with his mum again. I agreed to check it out with him and said as long as she could show she was prepared to be moving on from the stuff in the scary stories it was worth a go.

It was hard letting go and watching him walk down his mum’s driveway, but it felt good when she rang me to tell me he was doing just fine.

[Guest_1055]

Thankyou so much everyone for opening up and sharing a part of yourself. I enjoyed reading your memories.

Here is a collection of mine from the early years of school.....

We lived close enough to the local school that we could walk to and from it each day. We needed to pass an elderly man's house on the corner on our way there. He often had a pile of newspapers in a stack on his path. I didn't know why then, but looking back now I believe he was either saving them for the scouts or he was a person that delivered them to people's homes. Anyway he had this large vine growing on his outside fence. The vine had flowers on it, I use to pick the flowers on the way to school and suck something sweet from them. I don't know what the flowers were.....

When I was in grade 1 or grade 2, I could smell the scent of a sewing lesson about to begin. I could just smell the fabric or something even before actually seeing it. A rectangular piece of white fabric was handed out. The fabric had like little loops woven into it somehow. With a needle and coloured thread I remember sewing neat patterns right along, in and out...in and out. Loved the days we had sewing.

That happy memory is somehow joined to another one. Ah making pom poms. These took a long time to finish. One would have in their hand two cardboard circles of the same size. And someone else must have cut a hole in the middle of them both, because I don't remember doing that. Anyway you choose the coloured wool you wanted and started winding and winding. You had to do it even and firm ( but not too firm, otherwise you would bend the cardboard). When that piece of wool was nearly wound....well you choose another piece. Then you needed to tie it firmly to the end. The lesson would soon finish. Then on another day we would keep going until eventually the hole in the middle was extremely small. Then finally you would find you could not wind anymore, so a pair of scissors was needed. And someone, most properly the teacher cut the wool somewhere where the two pieces of cardboard met. A piece of string was used somewhere too. I cannot remember the actual process there. But in the end you held up this fluffy ball, noticing your chosen coloured wool sticking out. I loved making pom poms as well.....

[Clues_Of_Blue]

Shelley, your pom-pom memory made me smile. I too gained the skill of making them in primary school. Once gained, I used that skill with great enthusiasm. Suddenly there were pom-poms all over the house, of all different colours and sizes. Good thing Mum has a sense of humour, I think. 😉

[Guest_1055]

Ah Blue

Haha....It is so good to read your words and sort of connect here a bit in memories. And aren't Pom poms cute.

shell xxx

[TBella]

Hi Shelley

Thats a beautiful memory. Thank you for sharing it.

It made me remember making Pom poms with my nan as a child. A very comforting memory.

Thanks 😊

Kind Regards

TBella

[Croix]

I don't think the person I wrote this fragment for would mind if I repeated it hear:

I’m reminded of a night many years ago on the other side of the world. It was night, the dusk having given away after a long twilight. I was in my uncle’s fishing dory, an open clinker build wooden fishing boat with a red engine in the middle. Uncle Tom in the stern steering the tiller, and me in the middle just in front of the engine.

He’d taken me out so I could try my line, not on a proper fishing trip. He was like that, kind and always willing to give his little nephew a fine time.

I was bursting with pride, having caught one whole mackerel.

The stars were out, Uncle Tom had lit the oil red, green and white lights (red-on-the-right-is-wrong). We could see the harbour lights as the boat gently rolled and weaved through the waves.

Seemed to go on for ever, the steady beat of the engine, the boat moving. Then we were tied up at the wharf and I was waking up with my uncle’s jacket over me, still holding my fish.

Croix