Dressing Up

My eight birthday was one of the best. My first in Scotland with a whole new group of friends. The photograph from the day shows happy, smiling girls painted with red lipstick dressed in outfits that ranged from a Peter the Rabbit towelling robe to my mother’s wedding dress. I had always loved our dressing up box, littered with throwbacks from the wardrobes of all of my mother’s closest friends. Glamorous dresses and carefully crafted costumes bestowed upon me because none of them had had the good luck of being blessed with a daughter. Yet the dressing up box held sad memories too, as it had existed in a time before my family moved to Scotland. When these friends of my mother’s had been part of my everday life and other friends had worn these clothes. Eight months before this photograph was taken, my parents had uprooted me from my home in Central London to move me to a one horse town in a whole different country: Scotland. Pulling these relics from the box on my eight birthday I had flashbacks to being dressed as a gypsy in the Swing Park, and floating around The Phoenix Garden as a fairy. Now here I was, in my own bedroom that was not shared with my brothers any longer, surrounded by friends and I suddenly realised that moving was probably the best thing I could I could have wished for.