In the days before television that is, or even in the fifties and sixties when families ate together and before all known conversation died due to the box. Or indeed post television when the programmes weren’t to one’s liking or the “Potter’s Wheel” interrupted transmissions.

My Mother made herself useful, learned (taught herself, before Google or YouTube videos – amazing in itself) various crafts such as crocheting, macrame, rug-making, weaving.. and much more. Apart from conception that is, she never repeated that – just as well as I reflect on my life as THE only child. (Only child sounds lonely and in my head I was never that).

In true Raybould tradition she harnessed her artistic side and made things. Things that would be given away to the Sisters at Christmas without a vast outlay or show off, things that would be useful, and above all things that she had created with love for them. Did they want them? Were they to the recipients liking? Were they kept and treasured? Who knows, but she was tickled pink with pride of her cleverness, and chest expanded by the reception the gifts were given. I suspect that your mother was given one, and I am not offended if you don’t still have it, my pride in her achievements is sufficient.

After she died in 1989 I had the dreadful task of clearing the house, I know all of you have done it, or will do, and it is dreadful. A house ringing with the echoes of laughter and joy – and tears too, now feeling abandoned and unloved, awaiting a new memory maker. And her “pretty’s” or treasured bits looking lost and lonely their significance now not so well remembered or being consigned to memory.

But like you, I steeled myself and in the inevitable last minute rush of a task delayed to the last minute I bundled those bits she made into a supermarket bag and there they have laid ever since – until today. I wrapped them in tissue, and stored them in a plastic box which found its way into four lofts I think since then. This is a sample of a few of them. So they are creased, discoloured slightly, smell a bit musty or airless, distorted and not looking their finest, but the care and love she took shines through even on a non-photoshoot day like today. Overcast and gloomy, just the day for it! One of those jobs for a rainy day.