Patricia Brudenell

My earliest memory of the Royal Festival Hall has shining significance.  Having never been out of the west country before, at the age of sixteen, I took my twelve year old sister, Maureen, up to London by train to visit the Festival of Britain.  What an experience that was!  How my parents had the faith to allow it I don't know, but it seemed quite natural to me at the time.  We were at least staying with friends, which was some sort of safeguard, but I don't think my parents can have realised that we would leave early each morning , unaccompanied, to travel by the magic red double-decker buses and tubes, not only to visit the Festival, but to travel all over London, and to walk till my poor little sister's legs would scarely carry her.  Since then my husband, Paul, and I have attended many, many concerts and ballets in the Festival Hall, very often on celebratory occasions, so it has a very special place in our affections.  These visits often included our best friend, Dorothy, who was profoundly deaf and registered blind.  She used the extremely limited tunnel vision which remained to her, to very good effect, and having found the best position in the house, she could use her monocular to view one small section of the stage at a time. Although she could not hear a note, she remembered the music from the time before she lost her hearing at the age of thirteen and was a real afficionado.  As Maureen and Dorothy both died very suddenly in their early sixties, fresh experiences are denied us, and all memories of times spent with them gleam like jewels as we look back - but none more so than my first visit to the Festival Hall.