First of three films at Marlborough Hill

Monica Alcazar came to a couple of the embroidery sessions at Marlborough Hill, Harrow, and has put together three wonderful video clips.
Can be viewed on YouTube.  This is the first: the other two to follow later in the week.

Filming, Valentine's Day and a birthday

A riotous time today at the Harrow embroidery class. Rosa Martyn from the Royal School of Needlework comes along to teach the goldwork pack.... Tomorrow (Friday) is Bharti's birthday (Bharti helps to run the group.) And there is a long-planned Valentine's Day party. Flowers and red roses have been bought. In the event, everyone decides to stick to the sewing. There will be other times to celebrate Valentine's Day.
Thankfully Monica Alcazar has come along to film the proceedings for posterity. More on YouTube in due course....

The day starts well with Bharti handing around nuts....

She gives me a coconut as a present as she says she has missed me (the first time that I have been able to come for a while)

We're lucky to have Rosa Martyn from the Royal School of Needlework to teach. She arrives in a wonderful black jacket embellished with sequin applique

Starting on the goldwork packs

Breaking for lunch

Pasta a favourite with this group

Bharti with Ruby, the cook

Mina has brought her wedding sari for me to try on. Bharti - birthday girl - poses with me. This sari has a separate fitted skirt. Much easier to wear. Bought by Mina in Gujarat more years ago than she cares to remember. Valentine's Day party flowers ....

A group photo

 

The cake - with two hearts. One, Bharti says, for herself and the other for her husband. It is eggless.

   

Singing Happy Birthday

Forging new friendships

The country is hit by blizzards and a cold day in Shepherds Bush - though not much snow on the Uxbridge Road. A short walk down the street to a sheltered housing complex that I didn't even realise was a neighbour. We are interested in taking the Stitch embroidery workshops into residential homes for older people and inviting people of all ages and backgrounds into the centres to join the classes. The manager of the complex says that her residents are isolated. She feels that in our culture - 21st century Britain - old age is not valued. In the summers in Nigeria, where she was brought up, she was sent off to the village where her grandmother lived. She learned how to cook, use native pots as refrigerators, sew....The wisdom of the old is valued. Not here.
People become flat and depressed through isolation. Classes - like the embroidery classes we are planning - could provide much needed interest and also be something to look forward to every week. They would  help to forge new friendships. More stimulus and also another way of engaging with people who need to be looked after and cared for.
Am shocked to think that this large, insular, community is on my doorstep and that I have such little contact with it.