OBJECTS from our past can have a transformative effect on our
consciousness, in ways that mere words can never have. Handling a
childhood toy, or tasting a favourite sweet brings on Proust's
famous "madeleine effect": such distillation of memory and
sensation is routinely used as a way of communicating with elderly
people whose short-term memories are long since shattered.
But it can go much further than this, as we discovered in
It's My Story: Living in the memory room (Radio 4, Tuesday
of last week). "Reminiscence centres", are commonplace in British
towns and cities, but to get the fully immersive experience you
need to go to Holland, and Hogewey dementia village, where
residents are surrounded all the time by a confected environment
recreated from their pasts.
Within the village there are 23 houses, organised into seven
different social, cultural, and ethnic characters. There is a
semblance of freedom, though in reality only one exit, through a
reception area, and the behaviour of the dementia sufferers is
indulged in a benign and protective manner. Thus, if a resident
visits the supermarket and walks out with two trolleys of ice
cream, it is not the responsibility of a frazzled family carer, but
instead the goods are quietly spirited back to the shop, with no
fuss.
The presenter, Kim Normanton, whose own mother was prone to
bringing home expensive bags full of pick-and-mix sweets, was our
guide to this peculiar fantasy world, and asked some of the
questions that would trouble most of us. Most important, is it
ethical to enfold dementia sufferers in an entirely fictitious
environment? The answer is yes, perhaps, if that were the case; but
the residents at Hogewey are not entirely out of touch. You might
be losing your marbles, but you are never going to go back to
powdered eggs.
Nostalgia of a different kind suffused Radio 3's tribute
Going Underground (Thursday of last week), marking the
150th anniversary of the London Underground. As well as Jonathan
Glancey's waxing lyrical about the perfect Platonic forms captured
in the architecture of Arnos Grove station, we had buskers,
writers, and the presenter, Petroc Trelawney, describing the noises
of the trains, the air compressors, and the escalators in Wagnerian
terms: leitmotifs resonating in symphonic counterpoint.
It was reassuring to hear some real music in the Underground,
courtesy of the licensed busking scheme, and a recent policy of
piping music into some stations. The latter started life as a means
of scaring off loitering teenagers. Perhaps it was a private joke
on the part of the station manager that the music we heard being
piped on this occasion was the fight scene from Tchaikovsky's
Romeo and Juliet, an archetypal depiction of youthful
delinquency.
A quick word in praise of the tennis commentary team on Radio
Five Live, whose ability to observe, describe, and analyse the
high-velocity exchanges at Wimbledon never ceases to amaze. Of all
radio commentating assignments, tennis must be the most difficult,
and they now need only to find a way to lift their voices over the
screams of adoring Murray fans.