So who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?

AT THE time of the Coronation, we lived in Ward End, Birmingham, and my parents organised a street party. I was just three-and-a-half, but I recall it very well. My mother, who was no seamstress, decided to dress me up as Little Red Riding Hood and enter me into the fancy dress competition. On the day, a photographer set up an army tent on the green halfway down the road. My parents were excited at the possibility of having a picture of me — like most people in the early 1950s, we didn’t have a camera. a neighbour’s son, 12-year-old Michael, was dressed as a wolf in a cape, with a string mop dyed black on his head. Everyone thought it would be a great idea for us to have our photo taken together: Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf.

But I was terrified. Though my mother tried her best to persuade me to go into the tent to have my photo taken, I could not be pacified. Telling me, ‘It’s only Michael, you know him!’ made no difference at all. so there never was a photo, but I still have the pictures in my head — and the sepia one of the street party — to remind me of the Coronation.

Heather Wilson, Letchworth Garden city, Herts.