My earliest memories of sewing began when I was around 5 years old. I used to play for hours with my dolls and my doll's house.
My mother worked as a part time hairdresser in my home town of Eastbourne in Sussex.
My sister and I would be dropped of to Nanny and Granfa's house in the summer holidays, and most days on the way to school mum would pop in to see nanny.
One day in particular sticks in my memory...I must have been about 4 or 5 years old...so Josie, my sister, was 13 months older than me...but we were ( in our own minds) twins.
Mum stopped of on the way to school as usual, she asked Josie and me. To stay in the car, mum had a lovely old Morris Minor in green. Well...I was desperate to see my dolls and my doll's house, which was kept for me to play with at nanny 's house. It was in her dining room, on what seemed to me a very high chest of drawers or side board.
I disobeyed my orders and sneaked into the house to play.
I got totally engrossed in dolly heaven, and sometime later realised I could no longer hear the familiar chatter of Mummy and Nanny.
I ran into the garden...down the path to the bank opposite the Coopers Hill Farm. Right at the bottom of the South Downs.
No Car....they had left me behind....oh how I cried, a neighbour who must of heard my cries, came to comfort me , I can still hear her Scottish accent saying, " its okay, they'll be back soon my dear".
What seemed like hours later my Mum's car pulled up at the bank, me standing there with nanny's neighbour.
Josie and I used to play a game in the car...one of us would get down behind the seat at the back of the car and pretend. That we weren't there! ...so this whole scenario had happened because of our own little world of 'twinness'
A slight case of crying 'Wolf'...nanny had put her hand behind her chair as usual to check...WERE. Both there.....somehow she had felt something....given mum the okay and driven all the way to town and discovered outside the school....that Josie had been telling the truth...I wasn't there!
