Virginie Faivre provides her account of the event.

I went to the 2 events and I enjoyed them very much. There were different people each time, very interesting people with a lot of experience and a strong desire to share.

On Friday I teamed up with Ann Marie, because as a foreigner, I was a bit wary of not understanding the person: accents, especially in Ireland, can be very strong and what is the point of her going shopping if I can’t help because I don’t understand a thing. It turns out we met a very kind granny, who told us all about her grandsons and why she needed sky socks. And I understood everything! Happy with myself we continued talking and I learnt so much about the situation of women in Ireland just a few years ago, it reminded me of how good we have it nowadays… Did you know that married women were not allowed a full time permanent job? I had a great time and was really looking forward to the next session.

On Saturday, I went with my partner, Miguel, and him being a strong man, we teamed up so that he could push the

wheelchair, while I chatted with Doris. Doris is a lovely granny who had a hard life too: the hardest bit for her is that her youngest son passed away a few years ago… As you can imagine, this was a very sensitive topic for her, she wanted very much to remember and share things about him all the time, but at the same time, you could see that her heart was broken… We had a lovely time, we visited a few shops, nearly bought a 340€ cover and then realized laughing what we were about to do. We chatted about life, neighbours, her other son, grand children and great grand children and about live in general. The day went very fast and it was time to go before I realized that 3 hours had passed by.