At 11:30 am we had a call from Matt, the last FaceTime session of this trip. He seemed in good spirits and we had a good talk. I told him that I dream about him when we are a way and asked if he dreams of us. We thought he said ‘no’, but the staff filmed a short video of him saying ‘yes’ by crossing his legs. Of course, he was put into the position of the ‘correct’ answer being yes, but we enjoyed it all the same and really appreciate the staff for making it possible.

In the afternoon we went to a talk by Paul Crooks on tracing slave ancestors for people whose forebears come from the Caribbean. Doesn’t sound relevant to us, but it was interesting enough that we each bought one of his books. One is a fictionalised account of a boy tracing his origins and the other gives help with tracing ancestors, for anyone really. He is firm that you need to have a purpose, a good reason for it, to take you through all the twists and turns and frustrations. In his case he was able to find the family of one of his ancestors from an African country, but only because she kept her own name. Usually slaves were given European names.

We had tea at a Weatherspoons pub, good, fairly cheap food, then went to the Fairfield Halls for a symphony concert. We thought we should be dressed up, but everyone was as casually dressed as us, and there was applause between movements, which suggests people not used to this type of concert, it was very good indeed, including serving ice creams in the interval.

Some shopping on the way home completed the day. The little supermarkets around Croydon stay open until 11.00 pm.