Orlagh canvassing stories
Orlagh and I spent yesterday afternoon outside Sutton Polling Station at the Pavilion where a constant stream of voters entertained us with stories of Sutton in the past and present. We heard talk of Winston Churchill’s uncle, Clement Freud’s first election to Parliament and rumours of Princess Margaret. There were tales of Sutton schoolteachers and flying blackboard rubbers, of lying at the end of the Mepal airfield runway watching the bombers take off and of elusive landlords.
Our map of Sutton and collected stories
One of the questions we asked was ‘Where do you go in Sutton to meet people?’ The most popular answers were ‘dog walking on the fens’ and ‘the pub’ while the surgery and the bus stop also got mentions. It wasn’t all positive though and several people told us that once your children leave school it can be difficult to meet people and that Sutton can be ‘clique-y’.
There was one moment when two men who stopped by the map to read the stories and tell me about Clement Freud, the old train line and the house they used to live in, discovered that they had been at school together back in the 1940′s! As one of them put it.. “I wouldn’t have recognised you!” For me, it was just great that the Grapevine had restored old connections.
