If you could sit on this bench and chat for an hour with anyone from the past or present who would it be?

Well, I could be here for a long time changing my person on the hour though I will start with Mrs Black. She was Mrs Black because, in 1974 that was how women over 60 were referred to, I never knew her first name. I would sit Mrs Black down and I would tell her that the day she invited me for afternoon tea at her home has stayed with me for a lifetime.

I was four or five years old when one day on Montague Street, I with my mother, met Mrs Black. We were probably heading to my Grandmother’s and Mrs Black was probably heading home. It was common then to stop with someone you knew and have a brief chat. Somewhere in that chat with my mother, Mrs Black invited me, one day, to come round to her house for afternoon tea. One day I walked from my house to Mrs Black’s. I recall she invited me in and served me lemonade, sandwiches, and biscuits. She then asked me what channel I liked to watch and there I sat with Mrs Black watching TV. I am not sure what it was other than somehow; in this act, Mrs Black showed me kindness and that act of kindness made a deep and lasting impression.

So maybe we would watch the waves instead of the telly, maybe we would drink tea from a flask though in that hour I would let Mrs Black know that her act of kindness stayed with me throughout my life and I would say, ‘Thank you, Mrs Black.”

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