In case you needed it here is proof that I did, indeed, wear a cow costume with a dotty apron at the 1981 end of year musical show. And, apparently, brown woolly gloves and socks for that allover cow look. In my memory the apron was red with white dots, but it is clearly white with red dots. And my mother had edged that apron with lace trim! No wonder she wasn't going to have a bar of anyone criticising it. That is above and beyond.
Dad also commented on my last post about the tutu saga, which I also remember quite clearly. This was a couple of years earlier, when I did ballet, and for the end of year performance we had to have tutus ... the way my mum told the story was that she and the other mums went downtown and bought a tutu pattern, netting and fabric on the sketchiest of instructions from the dance teacher ("toning pastels" or similar) and then when they later showed the dance teacher what they had bought it was the wrong set of "toning pastels" and she insisted that they go and buy a patterned chiffon to make matching over-tutus.
So my mother not only made a pale pink tutu FROM SCRATCH (and that is a lot of netting ruffles, individually gathered and stitched on) but then a fitted chiffon over-top with ugly puffed sleeves that basically hid the tutu anyway. As you can see from this photo, which is me and my sisters. The pink tutu has narrow spaghetti straps in traditional fashion, and everyone unanimously agreed (i.e the mums and the ballet girls) that the flowery chiffon was an ugly disaster. But we all did it, because we were scared of the ballet teacher? Maybe? Or maybe 1970s suburbia was a more compliant time.
I googled the dance teacher. She was given the NZ Order of Merit last year for services to dance. A shame my mother wasn't around to comment on that one :)
That sounds like a more accurate version but the same result - one cross mum. You have to be obsessive in anything to earn an NZOM. I remember you two found modern dancing much more relaxing when we went to New Plymouth.
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