“‘Enrique (a Spanish student) and myself on our way to the Metropole to see Carve her Name with Pride in August 1958. I’m wearing a pink checked dress made out of a tablecloth and a hand-me-down dyed black duffle coat that once belonged to my sister. It was my first proper date and I felt a mess but Enrique was very romantic. He had climbed up on a fence to reach my bedroom window with a red rose in his mouth, taken from a neighbour’s garden, to ask me out – very different from the Irish boys I knew. I felt such a freak in the picture because there was very little money in those days and I couldn’t afford to go to the hairdresser, whereas the Spanish students were very groomed and sleek. Mrs Fricker (Brenda Fricker’s mother) ran a English language school for students in Dundrum where I lived. They couldn’t go out with girls without a chaperone in their own country but it was different here.'”
(1958)
Submitted by Miriam Dunne