‘We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we began and to know the place for the first time.’ T.S. Eliot, ‘Little Gidding’

Many people who contribute to ‘Unexamined Lives’ do so because they want to re-visit past relationships and family experiences in order to make sense of them. For Ruth Simpson, however (who was born in Carlisle but moved to Borrowash with her family as a small child) it is the village itself that matters.

2014 was a landmark year in the life of the nation because it marked the centenary of the outbreak of World War One. For June Martin, long-standing resident of the Priorway estate in Borrowash it bore an added personal significance because on 3^rd of June, 2014, she reached the age of 80. Her children, Jeff, Janet and Nicola orchestrated the celebrations, beginning with afternoon tea at Hollies Farm and culminating in a memorable Sunday lunch in the Gun Room at Breadsall Priory restaurant:

My parents saved family photographs. Images of holidays, weddings and christenings were pasted into albums and stored in a drawer of the lounge sideboard where they lay undisturbed, year on year.

The more significant ones (my graduation, my mother’s retirement presentation) made it out of the drawer and onto the top of the sideboard. The top of the piano was reserved for just one item; a framed black and white photograph.

The 1914 unofficial ‘Christmas Truce’ when British and German soldiers crossed trenches to exchange cigarettes, swap food, sing carols and even play football is one of the most poignant emblems of World War One.