It seems like a million years ago now, but this must have been about 1971/72 at the school summer fete in Longlevens, the area where I grew up. I remember that my sisters Lorraine and Sally had done a rehearsal earlier in the week. I was in my swimming trunks that had been tastefully arranged with crepe paper flowers, whilst my sister Sara was in a similarly adorned swimsuit. We both had crepe paper flowers on our head and on my torso was written Flower Power - it was the seventies after all! I remember at the rehearsal I looked great but on the day our mother had to do the body painting because Sally and Lorraine were working. I look at this picture now and still giggle at my mother's dreadful lettering and insane face painting (actually, this was at a time before face paints were available so we just used watercolours). We won! I guess we looked kinda cute, and the Mayor of Gloucester - Mayor's really looked like Mayor's in those days - presented us with first prize. It was an enormous tin of watercolour paints, which I probably used more than Sara.
For the first 18 years of my life I always imagined that I would spend the rest of my life at 6, Church Road, Longlevens, Gloucester GL... well, you never actually needed postcodes then. I can't even begin to imagine how different things would have been had I still been living there. I have an enormous family who I rarely see these days and I am no longer in contact with my mother. I think about her occasionally, like when I was scanning in this photo and I try hard to remember the happy times we shared but it gets more and more difficult as time moves on.
