Explore the latest news and find out what's on this month
Explore our learning offer for schools, families and community groups
Uncover the rich history of Elmbridge with our latest online exhibitions
Want to discover more about your local area?
Explore the latest news and find out what's on this month
Explore our learning offer for schools, families and community groups
Uncover the rich history of Elmbridge with our latest online exhibitions
Want to discover more about your local area?
Portrait of Ann, by Erika Flowers
“I’ve got a cookbook. I’m expanding that and I am actually halfway through book 2, and I’ve been doing various pamphlets as well.
Christmas is coming, but we’ve also got a holiday called Hanukkah, which is a bit like, I compare it to Christmas and Diwali as a winter ‘light’ festival, so I’ve just finished my pamphlet with the help of a friend who sorted it out.
So I’ve been doing that, and as I say, creating recipes and changing them and thinking about what to put in book 2, and getting book 1. Actually, the community where my son is have just started cooking demonstrations based on my recipes. So, they’ve been having zoom sessions and they’ve let me join.”
“My oldest son and a very, very old friend of mine has come round to help me with something. My friend came and dumped a book on me at the doorstep. She just felt like a ride in her car I think, like a drive and that was nice.
Neighbours of course, I have very helpful neighbours. Next door, upstairs, round the corner.”
“I mean, we all live in a need-to-know kind of society, but it doesn’t help. All you want to know is somebody from the doctor phones you and says we’ve got a ration of vaccine, come and have your own vaccine.
You don’t really need to know who’s winning. ‘Have the Russians got a vaccine, have the Chinese got a vaccine, have the English got a vaccine?’ – you’re not really worried about the race, are you? We have no control.”
“[I’ve been] bored, doing a lot of cooking… I’ve done that all my life and I did it for work for about 10 years and I’ve just got time to create recipes. I’ve been doing some videos, managed to prop my phone up and do videos and then send them to various people which is fun.”
Portrait of Edith, by Erika Flowers
“I come from a big family and we were always together on the weekends. In summer we would go on picnics, there were 30 or 40 of us and we went to different picnic spots. All my brothers and sisters went to George in the Cape and slept in a self-contained flat. We all had our own flats but in the same building and then every day we would get together in the cars and go to different beaches and do lots of sightseeing. We had lovely holidays while we were growing up. It was just carefree…
We came here [to the UK] with just our clothes and that was it, and not very much money either. But, thank goodness, we were part of a big church in South Africa, and the pastor here had worked with the pastor in South Africa. So when we came over, we contacted him and we stayed with a lovely English couple who were at the church as well, and they helped us out tremendously, and then after 3 or 4 months we got a little flat and a job and settled here.”
“We’re lucky, we have my daughter-in-law in Walton, I just write down all my groceries and she orders it from Tesco’s, and she comes as often as she can but she’s also busy. My son works shifts and we don’t see him all that often.
My son in Ireland used to come once a month and spend a few days with us. My daughter used to fly over in between, but with lockdown we’ve not seen anybody. Even now it’s no good coming as they have to self-isolate.”
“I like movies and crime, and he [my husband] loves all of his sports. I used to tell him off that all he watched was sport, and now I go into his room to check on him and he’s watching Neighbours, Home and Away and children’s programmes! We have two TVs, one in the lounge and one in the bedroom, so we could both watch our own programmes.
When I was a teenager I used to go to the shops and buy True Detective magazines, so it’s always been an interest. Now I watch Poirot and Miss Marple.”
Portrait of Pam, by Erika Flowers
“I left school at 14 and worked in a bakehouse because I was going to do patisserie work, but got fed up as I had to do the cleaning. It was a cafe in Walton, and they had a separate cake kitchen. I learnt things from him from icing cakes, so I’ve done a lot of cakes in my time, wedding cakes.
The last cake I made was for my son’s wedding about 25 years ago. They then brought out rolled icing and I wasn’t used to that. I used piped icing and I used to do decorating and trellis work, so I gave up. My daughter then started doing them and my granddaughter now does them as well.”
“I do knitting and some art as well, because the R.C. Sherriff Trust sends us art or crafts to do every fortnight, so that’s something to look forward to, so I’ve been doing those…
In fact, I got a new one that came in this morning… It’s sort of a secret really, I don’t quite know. It’s something that’s going to go into the entrance of the Riverhouse Barn. I think everybody has got a piece to do and then it’s all going to be put together. We don’t really know and they haven’t told us what it is. It’s a design, we’ve got to fill in whatever we want to do, we can paint, we can do collages or whatever and it’s all going together at the end, so I don’t know what it’s going to be or how it’s going to look but it looks quite interesting anyway…
There are quite a few pieces in it to do and it’s quite interesting. I keep thinking, I wonder what it’s going to be, you know. Anyway, I haven’t decided what to do yet.”
“I certainly don’t want to go on public transport. The only time I’ve been into a shop since March, I went away for a few days with my daughter to Eastbourne and I was in a supermarket there. It’s the only time. In all this time that’s the only time…
It was in the evening, and there weren’t that many people there. We were lucky, one of my daughter’s colleagues has a flat down there so we went down mid-week for 3 nights. We went into a couple of restaurants and sat outside. It was overlooking the sea, it was lovely.”
“I’ve got an iPad as well now and I learnt to use Facebook. I got in an awful lot of mess at the beginning, pressing all sorts of buttons and goodness knows what. Sending messages to people I shouldn’t have sent messages to.
But I’m quite good now, I often put things on there and I reply when people put different things on there.”
Portrait of Janet, by Erika Flowers
“What with this lockdown, it’s been terrible… It has [changed] now because we’re able to go out and about and things, and I’m slowly going with Irene to some of the groups we go on during the weekdays and that, which is very good, I enjoy it.
It’s good to get out and do a bit of gardening and that, and here I just wish people would join in more… A few people stay in their flats, but it’s a case of getting them all joining in…
Now that lockdown is easing, is there anything you’re particularly looking forward to getting back to doing?
Well just getting our coffee mornings going down here, getting everything going downstairs – like Irene wants to get everything going again down here, which I often help. If Irene’s away I help Tony, who came round today to look, I help him do coffees and teas and things, and we get the bingo going in the evenings, which will be good. And I hope Burview Hall starts again, where I used to go… arts and craft.”
“I grew up in Leeds, in Yorkshire, that was where I was born…
We lived in Leeds for quite a while, then we moved off to here with my parents, and then my parents passed away… I have got some memories of Leeds, some of my cousins live up in Leeds, some I can’t find but I keep in touch with some of my cousins.”
“We [my family] used to talk on WhatsApp and things, and my sister said, whilst the lockdown’s on, don’t go travelling far or anything!…
I see quite a lot of my disabled son. I see him on Sundays, where I go to a church… I see [my son] David on a Sunday, when we meet. Because he has a carer who goes round with us, and then we go back to his place, then I normally come back home after.”
Portrait of Lorna, by Erika Flowers
“It [things in lockdown] changed a great deal, because once a month we had a meeting – there was eight of us would have a lunch together and meet, and that closed because we used to go to the local day centre.
They named us ‘The Loud Ladies’! When we said we’re coming for a special dinner, they always had a tag, a thing on the table, with ‘The Loud Ladies’ written on it. That obviously all stopped.
Last year’s lockdown, we decided that we would carry on meeting, but there could only be six of us, and we took our deckchairs and our picnics to Hersham Green and sat there. We’d end up sitting there all afternoon… But that all stopped, the weather started getting cold and it stopped. And then, of course, the lockdown happened again, so we just couldn’t meet.”
“The other thing [problem] is of course my grandson and my new granddaughter! I haven’t spent as much time with them as I would’ve liked.
Although, I was in their bubble, but we still – because my grandson carried on going to nursery, my son and daughter-in-law were frightened of the risk it would give me. So I didn’t see very much at all of them, I certainly didn’t see them indoors.
And of course my little granddaughter was born in November, when I had to go to the house to babysit the older one. So that made a huge difference, not being able to be with him as much as I would like.”
“I remember the feeling when they told us we were going to lockdown, I remember, almost a lonely sort of feeling. And I remember the day when they said that we were locking down and I thought well, how do you get food, how do you get shopping?
And I remember, Waitrose is just around the corner from me, and I remember they opened it up, the first morning, for pensioners, or people over the age of 65 I think. But you had to go there first thing in the morning. And I can remember walking round there, that first morning, and getting in a queue, and I remember being cold and thinking this is so weird, that it must be like wartime, when people had to queue to get their food.
And it was a funny, lonely feeling. But that was only that first week, and then I thought, well actually I can cope with this! You know, this is not that bad, there’s worse things.”