Snow, research in Southfields and embroidery

A meeting at Southfields Library with Sucheta Samant (Library Manager) and Chris Dobb, who has been working on the project almost since the start. Sucheta is wearing an embroidered salwar kameez.

We make plans for the exhibition to open here after Easter. And wonder whether we can find funding to run another embroidery course, this time for eight weeks, during the show.
The roads pleasantly clear because of the snow, still throwing the country into chaos.
But the weather has hammered home something I was thinking about earlier in the week - the loneliness and isolation of so many older people in modern Britain and their too often insular- if not imprisoned -  lives in residential homes.
Many are literally stopped from venturing out at the moment by icy pavements.
Read the Baring Foundation's report Aging Artfully on older people taking part in arts projects (Stitch is mentioned).  A lot of interesting observations generally on aging. Notably that isolation is now known to have adverse effects on health. And an explanation of the terms 'Third Age' and 'Fourth Age'.
And finally - a record-breaking performance, surely, from the Royal Mail. A delightful Christmas card arrives from Margaret Andrews of the Institute for Germanic and Romance Studies, thanking me for inviting her to the launch of the British Sari Story in Brent in October 2007.  (I first met Helen Scalway, a key partner in the British Sari Story at the IGRS at a conference organised by Margaret). It takes me a while to work out what has happened - but the post mark reveals all. Margarget posted the card on 22 December 2007. It has taken just over two years to arrive....