At our two reminiscence centre museums you can come in and do some impromptu reminiscing. There is usually one of our team available for a blether. Feel free to pick up objects and look at our nostalgic photographs. Primary school children, handling the wide variety of objects on display, ask what some of them could possibly be used for. Brought up with light-touch computer keyboards, they exclaim
at how hard they have to press the keys of the old typewriters to make an impression. Dialling a number on the old telephone “takes ages” to a generation raised on push buttons and speed dialling. They find it hard to believe that teachers were actually allowed to thrash children of a bygone era with the leather tawse. Some things don’t change, though and they can quickly get the knack of keeping a yo-yo in motion or clicking the lever of a View-master to look at a succession of pictures of Edinburgh Castle, Arthur’s Seat etc. Older people nostalgically handle the Box Brownies, recalling posing for family snaps or turn the handle of the Singer sewing machine, remembering their mum making their party frock. Sometimes music floats through the room as somebody picks out a tune on the piano or shoulders an accordion to recreate a Jimmy Shand moment. The smell of a National Dried Milk tin or a pretty little bottle of Evening in Paris or even a chunky bar of Carbolic soap from the ledge of the scrubbing board can be powerfully evocative. A lot of the household gadgets and old woodwork tools bring memories flooding back and visitors from as near as Leith and as far away as Australia find common ground as they reminisce and tell their stories to each other.
