Concretewords : 'The Dress'

St David's Day, 1993. Begin Hill School, Llanelli

The dress : 


Happy St David's day, well, sort of. This photo, 20 years old to the day, tells the story.

We left Grimsby in September 1992  to join World Horizons, a christian mission organisation based in Llanelli preparatory to joining their outreach base in the inner city in Northern France 6 months later. We'd already left our jobs as teacher and social worker 2 years previously for a 5 month training programme with YWAM on the Mercy Ship, The Anastasis. What an adventure, more about that another time. Back in Grimsby we got supply jobs until joining WH.

I liked living in Wales. I joined a choir. They weren't too keen on having such a short stay member so I had to sight read like mad to make sure I could keep up to justify my presence. I had to be able to say I sang in a Welsh choir! My looks felt at home too. My father is Liverpool Welsh. My granddad Jones sang in the Liverpool Welsh Male Voice Choir. Now hows that for a name drop :-) 

Finding somewhere to stay was an adventure. On a trip to France we met someone who had been to Llanelli on a visit and had met a blind lady who wanted to go to a blind children's school in the jungle in Zimbabwe for a few months to teach braille but couldn't go because she had no one to care for her cat and dog while she was away. To cut a long and highly unlikely story short we ended up living in her one bedroom bungalow while she was away. The lack of space inside was made up for by the view from the picture window out over The Gower, the fun of having a dog despite being a family on the move, and the distinct advantage of moving from a house where you had to plug the vac in in every room to one where I could plug it in in the middle and reach all the edges.

The 1st March 1993 was our last full day in Llanelli, the girls' last day at school there. Already sad to have to say goodbye to her friends our younger daughter did not want to have to get dressed up as well, but all the other children were already in costume and mum being there with camera at the ready it was an obligatory rite of passage. We had to give the dress back at the end of the day, but I still have my homemade felt daffodil brooch I bought and wore proudly on the 1st March for several years after.

The Thursday, 2nd March we loaded up the car, all 4 went to prayer day, were "prayed out" together, left like the Von Trapp family, got in the car, picked up a few last things and drove out of Wales, stopping off in Cardiff to have lunch with relatives. We over-nighted in London, drove onto the ferry first thing in the morning on the 3rd and arrived at our new home in the North of France, 7 flights up, 8 different nationalities in our stairway. Our furniture arrived in a lorry the next day. On Monday morning we settled the girls in their new school then went into Lille on the Mongy tramway to queue up at the Bureau d'Etrangers to start the process for getting a Carte de Sejour residency permit.

2 weeks later we were at a conference in Paris. We slept on a church hall floor and looked for free things to do and see. I will never forget walking along the banks of the Seine, the children skipping and singing Happy Birthday to you in English with their Grimsby accents, Welsh and French with no English accent and wondering if I was dreaming !