nunnery dialogue

NUNNERY DIALOGUE- rough ideas- ad lib responding to participants reactions/conversation

Hi there, please come in and stand here near the radio

I’m just going to lock this catch purely so this door shuts, to get health and safety out of the way- in the event of an emergency- this is the only emergency exit - or you just want to leave just push it up and push the door- ok?

Ok- I’ve got something I want to share with you that was once in my pocket- I’ll just put it out and then will share with you a memory

H Put out items, very carefully on the paper

Expose to light

Very carefully put them back in

Were you ever a boy scout or a girl guide? Discuss this for a while- When I was 15 I was a guide, patrol leader of the blue tits no less, real geeky girl with a tight perm, highly competitive, I was the only one who ever ironed their uniform really impeccably or put their toggle dead straight for inspection, I liked to look slick and walk proud, bit of a show off really. I was covered in all sorts of ‘interest badges’ showing my ability to demonstrate the very principles of guiding-helping others and developing communities- in homemaker badge I think it was where I had to demonstrate I could boil an egg and it was too hard for soldiers , and musician where I had to sing carols (very badly) to old ladies round the xmas tree, but still somehow passed.

One such badge i wanted to do was ‘Finding your way.’ Very excitingly, the Guide leader decided to run part of it as an inter-patrol competiton to win mars bars for the whole patrol. Ok, so imagine its 7.30pm on a hot summers Friday night and you are given a map to find a park and a matchbox to fill with as many things as you can- the patrol with the most items and greatest variety in their matchbox wins.

So we get the bus to the park, in our splendid uniforms (mine less creased than the others naturally), matchboxes in our pockets. Upon arrival we meet as a patrol and hatch our plan to get as much variety and of course win (was this ever in any doubt) we split up all over the park- I decided to look around the benches for items dropped, others were in the playground, on the grass, in the tennis courts. I began to make great finds- phone numbers lost, buttons, springs, lovely brooch, all traces of peoples lives that passed through- snapshot of strangers in the park.
As I came to one bench I saw a group of girls sat around drinking and smoking and laughing loudly drinking 20 20 and thunderbirds, they saw me and laughed. I suddenly noticed myself and my measely matchbox and put in deep back into my pocket, ran back to the entrance of the park, onto the bus and back to guides. we won the mars bars, other people only had twigs and leaves, so it wasn’t even a close call. However that was the last guide meeting I went to. The next Friday I went to the park, minus my matchbox and guiding persona and as they say, the rest is history…..

Do you keep much in your pocket- do you have an object to share with me?

Thank you. Now we need to decide what to do with our photographs- shall we display them in the gallery, put them in a bag to take home or push under the door- how do you see our images?
I’d just like to give you this, thanks for sharing (or listening) memories