I founded Wadswick Green's Musical Memories group - Moyra Evans

“I founded the Musical Memories group about four years ago now. I’d been at Wadswick Green for a few months, and I thought I would set a group up and see what the interest would be.

“Music is really connected to people’s memories, and I find for over 60s it’s particularly true with music from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. I noticed how easily people remembered music and lyrics, so I thought that maybe playing music and discussing it could be a good idea.

“At first, I invited about eight people to come to sit in my living room, with everyone bringing something they wanted to listen to. It was really successful and everyone enjoyed their evening, so I put a notice in the village’s newsletter to invite more people to join in.

“The group has grown over the years and now there are about 10 of us. We used to meet weekly in the village’s Greenhouse, during the restrictions we moved on to Zoom. I use Spotify to find and play the tracks, but I also let members know what we will be playing so they can find them too.

“What we play has become increasingly diverse over the years as more people joined in. At first, we mainly played pop music, but we now play a bit of everything, including classical concertos, musical theatre, opera, or even Elvis Presley. We like a variety of music, and are becoming really knowledgeable, so it’s always interesting discussions.

“Gradually we introduced different activities, so that each meeting we have is different. For example, recently I invited everyone to anonymously give another member a piece of music as a “present” and we had to guess who had sent it to whom. It caused quite a lot of amusement!

“We’ve had the Musical Memories group going for some time now, so we know each other quite well, it’s really good. When we first came to Wadswick Green we didn’t know anybody, so it’s a great way to meet people. You get to learn about people’s backgrounds, because they reminisce about their life, what they were doing when a certain song was playing on the radio... It’s a lot better than just talking about the weather!

“I moved to Wadswick Green almost 5 years ago now. When we retired, we first moved to Cornwall, then we wanted to move closer to family. It’s been very nice here, we found it very peaceful during the pandemic. We moved into a two bedroom apartment on the top floor. We have nice views of the surrounding countryside and get a lot of sun, it’s really lovely.”