FLUFF AND BEADS Eloise Garlick, 1 minute, 33 seconds, colour, hand-drawn animation with fluff and beads, University of East London 2016

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Eloise Garlick speaks to octogenarian Christine Adams about her childhood

 

They used to collect fluff.

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My mum said one my aunties would like to have us there for a weekend, so we went and stayed with this aunty, and we slept in her bed... with her as well and I got stuck in the middle, and it was so... I remember it being so hot, and she had this really, fluffy blanket, which I picked on the fluff off.

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We used to say fluff for some reason. I don’t know why (laughing). My sister and I used to have a whole ball of it, (laughing) from different places that we had been! (laughing) picking fluff off of blankets and clothes, I suppose (laughing).

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We also used to collect beads. We had all different sorts of beads, old necklaces and things we used to take apart and we used to keep all the precious ones in matchboxes with a bit of cotton wool, like crystals or diamonds, which we thought were diamonds. And the other ones we'd keep in a tobacco tin. You take them to school and swap them with other girls, so you could have this diamond for two of them, and two of those or two of those beads (laughing), which was almost like, I suppose, treating it like money really.