We had a big family meet up today at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. There were cousins there I haven’t seen in 30 years and swapping memories of our childhood was great. We each have slightly different memories of the same occasions and the same houses and fields. Our memories were more of things and places rather than conversations. Conversations will no doubtedly have made or enabled these occasions and been the conduit of the experiences but they are not the features of the long term memories themselves. The moments are then relived through conversation and the dialogue of swapping fragments of memory – piecing together our individual memories to create a bigger collective memory.
