Seventies night - great!, a chance to wear those yellow patent leather platforms that I had to buy when I was sixteen even though they were half a size too small. I’d never been able to throw them away! 

Every year the dive club has some major fund raising events these include a fancy dress night, Quiz night and disco, BBQ’s and our Annual dinner and awards ceremony which isn’t really a fund raising event but we always have a successful raffle with it. 

The year before we’d had a Caribbean night which I’d worked really hard for; starving and torturing myself with hundreds of sit-ups so that I didn’t look ridiculous in my swimming costume and sarong! 

This year it was going to be a seventies night, organised by an excellent team headed by Olive as social secretary. Over 70 Tickets were sold and at the end of the night we had raised £272 with ticket sales and raffle for club funds. 

Our social events are always well attended as our reputation for quality food, music, and good atmosphere has grown over the years. All that at only £4.50 a ticket! 

My husband was disguised as a hippie and I dressed in a vaguely seventies smock and with my gorgeous yellow shoes we arrived early clutching our raffle contribution and my usual effort of pizzas to find tables already groaning with delicious food 

As always a hundred percent effort had been made and looking around I was delighted to see members of ABBA, punks hippies etc and wished I’d thought of wearing something similar. As usual Ger and Gail looked very chic and glamorous. Susan was very smart in her mother’s shortened wedding dress and designer label shoes found in a thrift shop. 

This was probably the only time you could go up to a friend and say, ‘ what the hell have you got on?’ instead of just thinking it.  Although most of the people attending were only children ‘if that’ in the seventies, a few, including the Browns (three brothers and their wives) looked excellent and must have been very trendy and cute thirty years ago, minus grey hair and accumulated pounds. 

All too soon the music stopped and the lights came back up – what’s going on, has some one lost their earrings?  But no, it was midnight and we had to go home.  The company had been great, I’d eaten far too much but surely all that dancing would have compensated for that, and not once had a ‘Hi ho silver lining’ been played, a tune I’d hated since the local dances of my youth were all the bands used to play it at least three times a night, must have been easy to play! 

I squeezed my yellow shoes back on and tottered over to Olive and Ger to congratulate them on another excellent night, then clutching onto my handsome hippie I hobbled off.