REAL LIFE RECORDINGS
Sample Real Life Recordings (Best heard with minimised Windows Media Player)
Here are short extracts from four of the many life stories Lorna has recorded over the years. Special thanks to the story-tellers for their permission for these to be used.
click here to listen to sample 1 and read along as you listen:
DENIS - Mendip stiles. "Course, some of the walls out on the Mendips, they're quite unique. Well, out there the stile was a slab of stone about, ooh. three feet long and about two feet deep that was put in you had to climb over. Well, the top of that stone then where clothes - and I expect women with long skirts as well would be the worst ones - sliding over it, the top of that stone was polished just like glass. And I can show you several of those on the Bath Road even now."
click here to listen to sample 2 and read along as you listen:
SISTER DAVISON - X-raying an orang-utan. "They brought him in through the back door and everybody was saying well, you know, 'Hush, hush' and 'We shouldn't be having a gorilla in the hospital or an orang-utan' - and he came in, he sat in the dental chair quite well and he looked at the film before putting it in his mouth. Several films he got rid of. I don't know whether he chewed them or what he did. He eventually condescended to have one put in his jaw and Fred Perrill got this very good x-ray."
click here to listen to sample 3 and read along as you listen:
ETHEL -German aeroplane captured. "And then we had a German aeroplane that came down - and this was a great to-do. And I was ringing up Michael and I said 'How are you getting on?' 'Oh', he said, 'nothing happening'. I said, 'Huh, you up in London think you're in the middle of things and here are we in the middle of Mendip and we've captured three Germans and the aeroplane!' Then, at that moment, a voice said, 'Aren't you talking dangerously?'. And I was cut off."
click here to listen to sample 4 and read along as you listen:
ELISABETH - Her hospitable Mother. "My mother was beautiful, had blue eyes and fair hair, with a wonderful complexion. She was quite tall for a woman and she had the most lovely smile - and she also had a very lovely speaking voice. She was a very generous-minded person and the home was always open. There was never a Sunday lunch that we were without a full table of people, of friends, of all sorts - and she had a very loving and wide and welcoming mind and heart. We were fortunate."