Today

Last weekend was a weekend of feasting and frolicking. What with Becky jumping out of an aeroplane, Lizzie graduating and us celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary, much champagne was drunk.

A good deal of it was drunk at the Fete Champetre at Stourhead. This is a regular party with music, fireworks and a range of events around this beautiful Capability Brown garden. We go every time, if we can. The theme was "A Night with the Stars". As always, the Barretts dressed up. Liz & Becky took the whole b-list celebrity look very seriously with too much blonde hair, too much tan, overlarge handbags and oversmall dogs. Paul took it seriously with a jacket covered with shooting stars and the legend "Star Struck" on the back. And I put a posh frock on a teetered around the grass in high heels.

We had a picnic and, as always, the most beautiful weather. We sauntered around the gardens and I was invited to join in with a small choir singing "Dream a little dream of me" of Mama's & Papa's fame.

In My Day

There were always opportunities to dress up at home. On the landing there was a huge chest of
drawers which contained, among other things, dressing up clothes and curtains (which were always useful as cloaks etc). There is a picture in the family album of my brother Chris wearing a satin curtain as a skirt.

We were all dressed up as chessmen for the chess club's carnival float and it took me no effort at all to dress up as a fairy queen at any time.

The album shows Mamma dressed up variously, as a medieval lady in wimple, Victorian mother for the Croydon Millennium and Daddy dressed up as a schoolboy for no reason, it seems, other than a laugh.

For Christmas, when I was the Angel Gabriel in the school play, I had a plain white shift, but the most magnificent pair of cardboard and crepe paper wings which I had to carry on the bus. Beatrice was dressed up as a Christmas tree, also in cardboard and crepe paper and she, too, had to travel on the bus, in full paraphernalia. She was unable to sit down....

Perhaps the crowning achievement was when we put on a performance of the Mikado using only the forces the family could muster, that is, 6 of us. We mimed to the music. Problem, though - there are 3 little maids from school and we were only 2. No problem! Mamma put Beatrice in a double-sided costume and painted a Japanese face on a paper plate and affixed it to the back on her head. When the, moment came, she had to do a twirl and show the audience the back of her head!

Does this explain why I took a course in costume design - so that I could do in properly?