The educational authorities had organised an exhibition of physical education for schools in Wales and DWS had been chosen to give a display of dancing.

Our gym and dancing teacher at the time was Miss Vellacott (later Mrs Jenkins) and it must have been due to her hard work and knowledge of dancing that our school was chosen. She herself was a beautiful dancer and it was later a great sadness and frustration for her that after contracting polio in August 1947 she was never able to dance again.

I was surprised and delighted to be one of the ones chosen. We learnt four new dances of which our favourite and the one which eventually won us the most applause was a Polish dance. It was danced in pairs and there were four pairs of us. We wore Polish national costume. The “men” were in cotton shirts and trousers, the latter cross-gartered from the knee down and they wore hats. The “women” were in full peasant skirts with white aprons, long-sleeved white blouses and small black waistcoats; they also wore hats. There was a great deal of jumping and heel-clicking in the air and we enjoyed doing it immensely.

The Minister of Education came round at the end to congratulate us warmly on our performance.