A coat well travelled!

I first came to Geneva to work when I was 21. I was young, skinny and suddenly had what seemed like an enormous amount of money to spend and since I had to look presentable for work what did I do ..... what most red-blooded young women did .... I shopped! I suppose for many of us being young was when clothes shopping was fun - before the weight gain and old lady dresses that looked like they had been made from your mom's sofa fabric and but which went nicely with the curtains thank you very much!

One winter I remember I bought myself a rather nice pair of boots and a woolly coat which I thought made me look a bit like a sheep but boy did that coat have a lot of success!

Taken on the quai in Conwy, 1981

In February of that year I flew to Denmark to see my sister. One day we decided to take the kids on a day trip to Sweden - she had a two-year-old and a new born. So new coat and boots to hand we caught the early morning ferry. It was cold but sunny as I remember, so we decided to have a wander along a lovely little deserted beach. All of a sudden the two-year-old shot off and charged straight into the sea! IN FEBRUARY! IN SWEDEN! My sister screamed, I tore after him fully clothed and hauled him out. To be honest it wasn't that deep because he hadn't had time to go far but it was deep enough for me to get bloody soaked in my fancy new boots and coat. The little sod!!! We had to strip him off and wrap him in whatever we had to hand in the car and I just had to sit there and wallow in my misery. That little sod is 36 now - I must remind him of that incident one day!

Anyway, in 1985 I married and we moved to DC where I worked for the World Bank. I remember getting off the metro one evening and a lady came running up to me to ask where I had bought the coat as she loved it! I had to let her down gently and explain that I had bought it in Switzerland but hey - more success for the coat!

Then in 1989 we moved back to Switzerland and a couple of years after that my sister-in-law was saying how much she loved that coat. I didn't wear it much anymore so I told her she was welcome to have it. This was the sister-in-law who sadly died unexpectedly a year ago last week. So at the weekend I called my brother to see how he was doing after the one year anniversary of her death. In actual fact he was doing fine so that was a relief all round. But, he was telling me that he has got a job, on a voluntary basis, for two days a week working in local hospice care. Then he laughed and said that after her death he had had the hospice people come to the house to take her clothes for their charity shops. She had loads of clothes (I can't remember if he said 30 or 50 coats but you get the idea). Anyway, they took everything away so that he didn't have to deal with it. And last week, on the anniversary of her death, he took a long walk along the quai at Llandudno - and what did he see walking towards him - yep you guessed it, my coat! I told him I think that was his wife's way of poking fun at him ... I'm sure she is, but boy has that coat done some travelling!