THE INVITATION (Out of the Blue.)

She came bursting into our kitchen every old wrinkle creased into her huge smile. We’d never seen her so excited.

“I’ve just received an invitation!” She waved the card triumphantly aloft. “Just look at this! It’s arrived completely out of the blue. Wonder who managed to track me down after all these years?”

It was an invitation to her old school’s centenary. Clearly this out-ranked any mere invitation to The Lodge or Buckingham Palace.

Not distance, the recent death of her husband, nor her eighty-three years were going to prevent her attending.

The next three weeks were filled with activity and much coming and going. From treasured family photos she designed and made for herself a “Woman’s Gown circa 1896”.

A daughter came the morning of the great day to drive her the two hundred miles or so.

Cheerfully loaded into the back seat of the car (“Can’t fit in the front, dearies!” she called out, waving regally to us) she was chauffeured in style to the function.

There, she was an instant hit. Others may have been more gorgeously and expensively attired, none was more appropriately dressed.

Photographers had her pose in the replica Cobb and Co coach. The Member of Parliament plied her with questions. An admiring crowd gathered.

One stout old matron suggested that beneath the costume she was even wearing a genuine whalebone corset. “No,” retorted the old girl, “never needed one. But I do have garters!”

And there, full in the doorway of the coach, she proudly hitched up her dress to display them.