The PVHG Book-Launch and Signing took place on Saturday 4th December 2021 at the Hall meeting room. An early purchaser, village resident Colin Goacher, is seen above outside Memorial Hall holding his signed first-day cover of the PVHG book “A Way of Life That has Gone“.
PVHG Chair Robin Boucher, seen below, who had himself painstakingly edited the original source interviews – from villagers of two decades ago, discussing their memories of eight to ten decades ago – was signing launch copies of the book in the Meeting Room.
Front cover – “A Way of Life That has Gone”
Copies of the book are available for purchase at £5 – contact Robin Boucher by email to randbboucher at googlemail dot com, or by telephone on 411638. They will also be available:
at the PVHG meeting on 25th January 2022
at subsequent 4th Tuesday PVHG meetings
at the June Platinum Jubilee display by PVHG during the anticipated Sunday 5th June Strawberry cream tea at the Hall.
Our Packington Village History Group PVHG is to publish a new book about life in the inter-war years in our village. The new book is to be launched on Saturday 4th December 2021, at the Memorial Hall meeting room, from 10 am to 1 pm.
Verbal testimony, some of it a whole century old, was recorded in the last century by PVHG, from reminiscences of still-living members of the village. Their vivid recollections form our new PVHG book, “A Way of Life that is Gone“.
The book will be launched on Saturday, and editor Robn Boucher, chair of PVHG, will be at the launch to sign YOUR first-day cover of the book.
Only 100 copies have been printed – this is YOUR opportunity to own this heart-warming treasure for an investment of just £5.
Write YOUR Life Story.. for future Packington Residents to read – and to be amazed..?
In March 2020, while confined to his home in our village, Adrian Mongredien writes:
At Hay Literary Festival, I heard a historian talk on how to write the story of our lives.
She told us that nothing is more valuable to historians than first hand experiences. The only way these can be discovered and cross-checked is if a number of people can be persuaded to write about their own individual experiences.
In the next few years the number of people who can remember living just after or through the Second World War will rapidly diminish. Every one of us has a unique story to tell. Events that we may see as mundane and ordinary may be fascinating to our great grandchildren. Consider – if you are over 70, then:
you probably grew up in a house with no central heating;
with coal fires which you were taught how to light and keep going.
you may remember what life was like before television.
you may have had no shower, but one bath a week if there was enough hot water.
How can we write our own life story? A good way to start is to find your birth certificate. In my case I was able to find, from mine, the building that I was born in on google maps – a nursing home in Weston Favell Northamptonshire in 1942- and discover that it is still there although it is now an old people’s home. Can you remember
the house, or area, in which you were born?
Where you first went to school?
How near were you to your local shops?
Was food and sweets rationed?
How many people lived there in the city, town, or village where you lived as a child?
Where was the nearest Park?
What sort of games did you play with other children living on your street?
Did you have a birthday party when you were a child?
What sort of presents did you receive at Christmas?
What was your favourite radio programme?
How many times did you go to the cinema every month?
Answers to all these questions will be of interest to future generations who will almost certainly be living very different lifestyles, as indeed are we today already.
I started writing the story of my early life a couple of years ago. Along the way I have found myself searching the internet for photos of New Brighton Pier (now demolished) and my secondary school (also demolished), and recently discovering on the net, the value of the house where I lived in a bedsit for ten months, during my few years in London in the “swinging sixties”. I was amazed to discover that it sold a couple of years ago for over £27,000,000. That is twenty seven million!!
You have
no idea what will turn up until you sit down at your lap top and
begin to remember your beginnings.
Over two decades ago, our Village History Group produced some fascinating reminiscences in the form of this “Where were you in the War?” booklet. Please will you NOW help us write YOUR history, for future village residents to enjoy? PVHG hope to publish YOUR story in a similar booklet when our current enforced home isolation comes to an end ..
Packington Village History Group PVHG is delighted to welcome publication of “Gems from the Gilwiskaw”, which author Laura Cooper completed shortly before her death.
“Gems” represents a lasting tribute to Laura’s participation in Packington life, and illustrates her commitment to recording the village’s history.
Laura was born in Packington in 1931, but lived for her first four years in Ravenstone. (Laura said that her parents decided to move back to Packington so that she could attend the Packington School). She remained in Packington for the rest of her life.
In “Gems” she paints vivid pictures from her childhood in the village (and Ravenstone) in the 1930’s and 40’s. Laura completed the manuscript shortly before her death in 2016.
Copies are available from:
Robin Boucher tel 411638 email: randbboucher@googlemail.com
Yvonne Eaton tel 412269 email: yvonne.eat@outlook.com
at a cost of £3.50 each copy
Robin Boucher
Packington Village History Group
August 2019
