Compassion Spring 2022

Spring 2022 - Compassion | www.tcf.org.uk 9 The last few months have been difficult in many ways, with the high rates of COVID, but for me and the library, life has been much easier. Rather than having to travel to Kilburn I’ve just had to pop upstairs, sort out the books and take them to the post office. My neighbours meanwhile have very kindly been taking parcels in for me. This has resulted in a much smoother and simpler operation and hopefully readers will have been receiving their books more promptly. There’s a lot to be said for an easier life and the library move seems to have given me just that! I know I’ve written about them before but I want to highlight our talking Compassions again because they are an amazing resource and our back copies have been borrowed so many times lately. Every quarter, Janet Armstrong, who has a beautiful voice, records our magazine and, with the help of her grandson George, puts them onto CDs for us. Our copies go back around ten years and are there for anyone to borrow. Of course they are most useful for people with poor sight, or with disabilities which make it difficult to hold a magazine and turn the pages, but they are also good for those of us who like audio books and enjoy listening rather than reading sometimes. For as long as there have been books, people have enjoyed being read to and we’re no different now. We’ve had some new books given to the library and one in particular has captured my imagination. It’s a collection of poems, all written by bereaved parents, grandparents and siblings, and was compiled by David Bransby in honour of his son Eliot. It’s called ‘Forget-Me-Not Poems’. I’ve always loved books, both for the words they contain and for the books themselves. I do have a kindle now, having been dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, but I also read lots of physical books and can’t imagine a world without them. This book is absolutely beautiful; the pages aren’t white with black writing but are natural colours, mostly greens and blues with flowers and butterflies printed into them. When I was nursing I went on a psychology course and remember being told that reading text from pages of pastel colours had a calming and soothing effect on patients and, when monitored, their heart rate and blood pressure would often come down from too high to normal levels. To come back to the book, the poems are lovely, beautifully set out on the page and written with love. They are accompanied News from the Catharine Pointer Memorial Library