As Proust said, Reg Varney lives on... (well, sort of)





Try a madeleine cookie, or a YouTube clip

Feeling the need for a bit of nostalgia? Visit a museum! It’s not just self-indulgent. Museums can have a powerfully therapeutic effect when it’s a matter of dealing with something like dementia.

Of course you don’t even have to visit a museum. French author Marcel Proust found that the taste of a madeleine cookie, the tinkle of a teaspoon or the sight of a hawthorn hedge in bloom could transport him back to childhood in what he describes as a magic armchair whisking you through time.

My madeleine experience came the other night with friends in The White Hart pub in Woodbury. I’d just happened to mention my current museum obsession when from the other end of the table came that long forgotten but instantly recognisable, wheezing, strangulated, raging cry: "Get these buses out, Butler!"

Clicking here will have a similar effect as you remember from all those years ago a much loved British entertainer. And see also a decent and talented man who loved Budleigh Salterton.  


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