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IN TOUCH – A tactile coronation and clay modelling

TX:Ìý 02.05.2023Ìý 2040-2100

PRESENTER:Ìý ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý PETER WHITE

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PRODUCER:ÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌýÌý BETH HEMMINGS

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White

Good evening.Ìý So many forms of creativity depend heavily on the visual, so to find one where touch is at least equally important can be a joy.

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Clip

I think certainly with faces, heads, my vision of what people look like has changed because I’m so now aware of the shape of the nose in relation to the top lip because I’m moulding this in front of me.

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White

Well, we’ll be talking to the blind man whose retirement has been enriched by a new hobby – clay modelling.Ìý And certainly, so much of life is illustrated by visual images, not least the event which is going to be dominating the headlines for the next week – I’m talking, of course, about the coronation.Ìý But how much of its appeal will be dependent on its powerful visual imagery?

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Well, our reporter, Fern Lulham, has been to a school in Kent where children with both visual and additional disabilities are being given the chance to feel what their sighted counterparts can see.

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Lulham

This is the sound of a group of visually impaired children at Valence School in Kent eagerly unwrapping some gifts from the charity Living Paintings.Ìý And if you, like me, have ever felt left out in conversations surrounding a big event because you literally couldn’t see what all the fuss was about, you might just understand their excitement.

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I spoke to Communications Manager at Living Paintings, Nick Ford, to find out a bit more about the charity and the services it provides.

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Ford

Living Paintings helps to bring the visual world to life for blind and visually impaired children and young people.Ìý We’re most famous for our tactile audio adaptions of children’s picture books, which really help children get to grips with the illustrations in a page by feeling every lump and bump of the original illustrations and listening to an audio guide that helps guide those little fingers over them, so they can start to see through touch.

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Classroom actuality

Teacher

Francesca, here’s one for you, it’s just in front of you.Ìý Good girl.

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Francesca

Is it Christmas or what?

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Teacher

It’s going to feel like Christmas, it’s a Christmas coronation.

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Ford

We came back after our Christmas break, as a charity, and invariably we moved on to the topic of the biggest event of the year, which is obviously the coronation.Ìý And just like anybody else, we were sitting around a table sort of talking about what might happen, what crowns might be used on the day, what the ceremony would look like, who would and who wouldn’t get an invite, obviously.Ìý And then our initial excitement really, really quickly waned when we realised everything that we were talking about was about visual elements – that moment happened to us and we were like actually the coronation is such a visual thing and what can we do to help and to make this more accessible, especially for blind children because this will be such an exciting moment for all children.

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Classroom actuality

Teacher

…somebody who wears a crown?

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Child

King Charles.

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Teacher

King Charles.Ìý What’s happening?

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Child

Coronation.

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Teacher

Well done, Benjy, yeah his coronation is coming up.Ìý So, they’ve made some presents for you guys.Ìý Okay?

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Child

Ah thanks.

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Teacher

Okay, do you guys what to open up and have a look and see what’s inside your box?

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Lulham

That nurturing voice belongs to Megan Miller, she’s a primary class teacher at Valence School.Ìý I asked Megan, how useful tactile and audio resources are when teaching visually impaired children.

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Miller

I mean there’s a number of words – fundamental, completely helpful.Ìý One of the things that I’ve recently discovered through my training is that children and young people with a VI don’t necessarily develop the incidental skills that children without a VI or vision impairment would develop.Ìý For a lot of children with VI their experience is what they can touch within their reach and if they can’t reach it, they don’t know it’s there and they can’t experience it.Ìý Having an audio description is great but being actually able to feel the shape of something kind of helps them build those pictures in their minds and then grasp the concepts of it better.

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Lulham

How do you find it when something like this happens if you can’t see it very well?

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Children

Hard.Ìý Hard.

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Ford

What we’ve done with this project is we’ve taken key elements from the coronation itself, so the Saint Edwards’ crown and then the profile portrait of King Charles, as shown on the first-class stamp, and turned those into beautiful tactile versions that children can keep forever.Ìý And each one of those comes with a bespoke audio guide.Ìý We’ve included all types of schools; we have a lot of mainstream schools involved in the project.Ìý Home around the country, teachers, parents, carers, youngsters – I think by the end of this week we will have reached about seven and a half thousand blind children and young people.Ìý They’re able to participate and feel involved in that visual spectacle by combining the elements of touch and sound together.

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Lulham

I know you’re curious, so here’s a little taster of what those audio clips sound like.Ìý This one describes the crown and has been voiced by none other than Dame Joanna Lumley.

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Audio clip

Adorning the crown are 444 precious and semi-precious stones and nearly two kilograms of solid gold.Ìý The colourful and sparkling stones include rubies, amethysts, sapphires, topazes, tourmalines and a garnet.

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Classroom actually

It’s a nose, look you put your finger on King Charles’ nose. [Laughter]

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Ford

If you’re a teacher who has a visually impaired child there’s loads of things we can do from kind of seeking out audio descriptions of things and making sure that we put all of those resources – you know, for instance, like football occasions or sporting events – making sure that they have something that they can touch there with them, you know, bring some equipment in from the sports and stuff to really help them gain an understanding of how that might look visually when those sporting events are being played.Ìý Seeking out small charities because they’re often the people that are doing the leg work that other people aren’t thinking about.

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Classroom actuality

Lulham

What do you think the King looks like now, when you’ve felt that picture of him?

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Child

Old.

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Lulham

Old? [Laughter] Yeah, possibly.

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Miller

Being included isn’t about being in a room with other people, it’s about having everything you need to be a part of that community. ÌýCoronation is not something you see in a lifetime, this is quite a momentous occasion and for them to be able to be a part of that, means that they’re a part of the community and it reduces that isolation, it reduces the social anxiety and just helps so much with confidence and it gives them that independence to make their own choices.

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Classroom actuality

Lulham

You’d like to hear the horses?

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Child

Yeah.

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Lulham

Do you think that will help you enjoy the coronation if you hear the horses?

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Child

Yeah.

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Lulham

Yeah, I’m a big animal lover as well.Ìý Anyone else having a party?

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Child

I’m going up London to watch it.

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Lulham

You’re going to London?

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Child

I definitely going to be there for nine hours.

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Lulham

You think you’re going to be there for nine hours?Ìý Do you think it will be worth the wait?

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Child

Yeah.

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Lulham

Yeah, good.Ìý Okay.

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Lulham

As a visually impaired adult, I wouldn’t mind having some of these things myself.

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Ford

Fern, the great news is, is you can.Ìý So, Living Paintings was always founded on supporting blind people of all ages, that isn’t going to change.Ìý Our free postal library of tactile audio resources – there’s something there for everybody to be able to explore their interests.Ìý But what we have found in our kind of strategic overview is actually we have the greatest opportunity to make impact by reaching people when they’re very, very young.

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Miller

It’s those moments where you just – you see their face light up or you see them getting something.Ìý You can talk about something and you could say this is this, this is this and then you give them something tactile and all of a sudden they go – oh right, yeah that makes sense.Ìý And it’s just brilliant, it’s great that they can have those opportunities.

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Lulham

Well, it sounded to me as though this experience had really allowed these children to put their finger on what the coronation might look like.Ìý Benjy, for one, certainly had a clear idea of what he was going to do to celebrate.

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Classroom actually

Lulham

Do you have plans?

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Benji

Champagne.

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White

That’s my boy.Ìý Fern Lulham reporting from Valence School in Westerham in Kent.

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Now, Allan Mabert has led a busy working and social life.Ìý He was one of the first blind rehabilitation workers teaching newly blind people the skills they’d need to cope.Ìý He was a sportsman; in fact he was one of the early visually impaired Paralympians.Ìý And as if that wasn’t enough, he was London’s first blind magistrate.Ìý So, hardly surprising then that once he’d retired, he was still looking for enjoyable and rewarding ways to fill his time.Ìý And he certainly seems to have found it, as I discovered the other day when I joined him at his clay modelling class in Buckhurst Hill in Essex, alongside his teacher, Esther Neslen.Ìý And in fact, I ended up getting a lesson meself.

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Actuality – lesson
Mabert

This is what you want to make.

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White

Oh, that’s a nice little bowl.Ìý

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Mabert

So, you make a round ball with your thumbs, pushing outwards, so you’re creating a wall the same thickness on the outside.Ìý Where’s Esther.Ìý

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Neslen

I’m just here.Ìý It’s lovely seeing you teaching Allan.Ìý That’s porcelain, what you’re playing with which is…

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Mabert

Porcelain is a very advanced clay to work with.

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White

Yeah, see, 10 minutes and I’m into the sophisticated stuff.

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Mabert

I was looking for a hobby that I’d never really tried before, apart from dabbling in the pottery room at the blind school about 50 years ago now, maybe even longer.Ìý One of the wonderful things about working with clay, it is very forgiving, so if you make a mistake, it’s not easy but you can make a correction.

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White

Yeah, I can remember working with it, like you, at school but unlike you, I’ve not gone back to it, so you can perhaps try and persuade me today.

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Mabert

Well, I hope I’m going to persuade quite a few of your listeners, actually, because I think it’s by far the most suitable artform for blind people.Ìý It’s very tactile by nature.Ìý I use my visual memory for the pieces I produce.Ìý Most of the fully sighted members in the group use either pictures or diagrams but if I can’t find a 3D model, I tend to use my visual memory.Ìý And also, inspired by the work of others in the group that are around the shelves and I always explore that and get inspiration.

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Actuality – lesson

Neslen

What are you having a feel of there, Allan?

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Mabert

The scale of it, it’s so big.Ìý I love the tactile nature of it, it’s all going off at all different angles, isn’t it?Ìý The person who did this sits next to me normally and it’s her first attempt.Ìý I don’t know what glaze she’s going to do that with but it’s really lovely.

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White

Just explain the process a bit because, of course, it’s not just about bending clay around.

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Mabert

The process is mainly in three stages – you’re modelling your piece that you want to create, it’s then dried out, it’s fired – biscuit fired – for the first time, so it survives the kiln.Ìý If that comes out in one piece then it’s glazed, then it’s fired again for the second time.Ìý I think glazing is the only aspect of that process that I need tutor assistance – you’re either dipping something into a sort of bucket of glaze by using tongs or painting glaze on with a brush, which obviously has its own difficulty or spraying with a gun and I’ve not even attempted that.

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White

But what about the firing and actually – that sounds potentially kind of dan – well not dangerous, how does that work?

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Mabert

For everyone, for all the members of the group the firing is done by the tutors.Ìý Esther, who I must say, without Esther’s open mindedness I don’t think this would have worked.Ìý I mean she’s not just a professional sculpture but she’s a very good conveyor of skill and knowledge.

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Actuality – lesson

Neslen

There is some nice things that you can do with bark shades and textures…

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But the most important thing was for the tutor to have an open mind about having a blind person in the group and integrated into the group with just minimal amount of adjustments really.

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Neslen

Before I met Allan, one of the managers came downstairs and said – do you think this is appropriate and do you think it will be safe?Ìý I was quite surprised, actually, that they’d said do you think it would be safe because it seems like such an obvious thing to do, actually.Ìý Probably the riskiest thing for Allan is getting down the stairs to the glazing area because they’re pretty risky, the stairs going down to the glazing area.

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White

So, nothing to do with the pottery at all?

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Neslen

No, not at all.Ìý When Allan first joined, I didn’t teach using the wheel because I didn’t throw at all.Ìý About a year and a half ago I taught myself to throw on a wheel and I very much had Allan in mind when I did that and most of the time, when I’m throwing, I keep my eyes closed, so it’s very much to do with your other senses and not necessarily to do with your sight.

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White

So, what was your approach to teaching Allan?

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Neslen

My approach was not that dissimilar to what I do with everyone else because I don’t have a project that I say – we are going to do this and this is how we are going to do this.Ìý It’s very much student centred.Ìý So, I was interested in what had drawn Allan towards this material and what kind of things he wanted to create.Ìý Everybody has their own style and everybody produces work which is very different.Ìý But I love the whole kind of tactile streamlined work that he’s produced.

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Mabert

I’ve done a few heads and it’s a bigger treat to do Green Man, if you’re a sculpture, so I’ve done two or three green men that are in my garden at home.Ìý But I have one piece here that you can explore.Ìý I did a series of British wildlife and that’s one of the animals, regarded as very British wildlife, so I don’t know if you can identify that?

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White

Well, I’m not sure that I can.Ìý It looks like it’s lying down…

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Mabert

Yes, it is lying down.

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White

It’s lying down, it’s got – oh, it’s not a rabbit, is it?

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Mabert

No.

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White

It’s got pointed ears, well straight up ears – a fox?

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Mabert

Yes.

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White

Yoahh.

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Mabert

I could never see fully and I could never see enough detail whenever I saw a depiction of a fox, didn’t know the detail of its face.Ìý But I was exploring a piece of sculpture which was the head of a fox in a ceramic shop the other day and I felt these wires coming out from the mouth and then found that foxes have whiskers.Ìý

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White

So, really, it’s helped your overall knowledge, perhaps, of anatomy?

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Mabert

Absolutely.Ìý I have learned so much about the human face.Ìý I mean we can put in all the aspects we know of the face, so many different types of noses, eyes, mouth and the most challenging part, for me, is to give the face an expression because you can’t hear a smile, can you, you can’t hear a grimace.Ìý It’s very subtle.Ìý And this is where the group and Esther are so good, they are critical friends really.

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Actuality – lesson

Group member
I’ve only just spotted it and I know that you were thinking about doing something like that, weren’t you?

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Mabert

Yeah, yeah.Ìý Well that’s the sort of shape I wanted.

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Group member

I know, I know.

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Group member

Allan is a fantastic member of our group, so we’ve all been together now for quite a long time.Ìý We’re very sociable.Ìý In the middle of the lesson, we have tea and cake and Allan does a quiz.Ìý I admire the way Allan is interested in what everybody else is doing.Ìý We all like to share what we’re doing and he feels everything.Ìý We describe everything.Ìý He goes on the wheel; I mean it’s technically so difficult.Ìý So, yeah, he’s a much-loved member of this group, which he’s probably told you is called the Crackpots.Ìý

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Group member

Allan is great.Ìý To be honest, he’s the first blind person I’ve ever actually met.Ìý You do wonder, beforehand, how is he going to cope doing with a process that most people would assume you have to be able to see to form.Ìý But he does marvellously well.Ìý I mean Esther’s very helpful in giving the advice and we all give our opinions as well but no, he’s very creative and it’s all in his head, I guess.Ìý I mean it starts off being in our head as well but we have the benefit of being able to translate it by what we see and he still has to keep it all in his head and in his feel.

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White

How good do you think you could get at this?

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Mabert

Ah, that’s all relative, isn’t it, yeah.Ìý I think someone once said – you don’t see what you create, it’s for others to see what you create.Ìý So, that suits me fine.Ìý I find it very relaxing; I wish I’d found it while I was at work.Ìý And the thing I like about this is that most of the skills, as a blind person, going back schooldays to adolescence, to qualification, to finding a job, are survival skills or skills that you have to do.Ìý With this hobby, it’s totally relaxing, there’s day that I come in and I just need to touch clay.Ìý People have liked some work more than others, I did do a mermaid once, the fish part was fine and very identifiable, the top half was more Arnold Schwarzenegger than a classic beauty, you know.Ìý I’ve got a really open mind, at my age I think I’m looking for the enjoyment that it gives me and if someone else is aesthetically pleased by it, it’s a bonus.

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Neslen

I think a lot of people, when they have more time when they retire, kind of gravitate towards more creative things that they wished that they’d done in the past.Ìý It gives you more confidence, you are more prepared to take risks and make mistakes and enjoy it more, rather than feeling that you have something that you have to prove yourself at.Ìý And that helps to improve the artwork that you make.

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Actuality – lesson

White

I’m not unhappy with that bowl.

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Neslen

Yes, for five minutes work that’s excellent.

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White

Perhaps I’ll take this up. [Laughter]

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White

And in fact, a little pot, not the one I was making, but one made by Allan himself, now has pride of place on our dining room table at home.

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That’s all for now, we’d certainly like to hear of hobbies you’ve taken up, which perhaps initially you thought wouldn’t be possible.Ìý You can email intouch@bbc.co.uk, leave voice messages on 0161 8361338 or you can go to our website, if you’re able, bbc.co.uk/intouch.

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From me, Peter White, producer Beth Hemmings and studio manager Simon Highfield, goodbye.

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