Family portrait VII
(Dressed up with my mum and sister: Carlisle, UK)
As promised, another shot of the New Year outfits – even my sister was forced into a dress under some duress from the parental quarter. This was my first costume of the evening, chosen for mobility reasons – my other longer, more flamboyant beaded dress was not suitable for going to the train station to pick up a friend so this one served as a stopgap both at the start and end of the evening. In the end, Ellie and I joined my sister for post midnight hijinks in a local nightspot and as I have no reasonable clothes with me on this trip, I had to make do with this vaguely comic nautical outfit. I stood out a bit on the streets of Carlisle, but nobody passed comment; if anyone asked me about it, I intended to tell them I was a naval captain on an impromptu night off.
Here my sister, Laura, is in her new Christmas dress and my mother is wearing a throwback party frock from her ball attending days in the early 1990s. She is smugly delighted that it fits after all this time. It may not fit after today; another day of festive gluttony awaits us as my mother over estimated the number of guests for lunch and has produced the most enormous ham I have ever seen. I detect that January might be a little less indulgent. Oh, well, until Chinese New Year season anyway…
– Today Rosie is coordinating all sorts of family fun in Carlisle, UK –
