18th September 2023

Thank the Lord for memories and being able to enjoy them! I expect, like me, your mind is stored with pictures of places where you’ve lived or visited, country scenes and faces of friends and family. They may no longer be with us, but we can still see them in our mind’s eye and recall the pleasure of their company.

I can no longer visit houses I’ve lived in but I can mentally walk through the garden I grew up with as a child and feel the sting of iodine on knees grazed as I tried to learn to ride a bike. In other gardens I recall the juicy tartness taste of raspberries, the hairiness of loganberries and picking runner beans. I can no longer climb the hills of the Peak District or ramble along the riverbanks in the dales but I can still return to those views, scan the water for coots and moorhens and hope to spot an elusive water vole.

On my mental travels I can visit a country farm or the arid limestone plateau or the mangrove swamps of Brazil, be a guest at weddings in Brazil or USA or watch amazing fireworks put on for the Commonwealth Games on Vancouver Island. I can live again the magical performance of Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Open Air Theatre in Regents Park on a hot summer evening and all these occasions bring back the joy of the friends and family I shared them with. I hope you are as blest as I am in your memories.

Lesley Fuller