My friend Rosey has been hanging around my blog for eleven years and appeared in about one hundred and twenty stories. In case you’ve not met, she’s an eternal thirty-something, a bit ditzy, lives a fun-filled single life, works as a teacher’s assistant at a school for little people and is the life and soul of any event she turns up at, invited or not! She now has a blog of her own where I share her anecdotes. To join Rosey in her adventures click here.

Rosey, Kermit and a shepherd called Frank: Keith Hillman

My friend Rosey loves dressing up. She went to a baby shower the other day wrapped from head to foot in toilet paper. She said it was the closest she’d ever get to being a mummy!

A few weeks ago, Posh Pierre invited several of us to a posh banquet at his posh apartment. I thought I’d wear my wedding/funeral suit and bow tie, and I reminded Rosey to wear something fancy. She thought I meant fancy dress and arrived as Kermit. It took her a week to wash the green food colouring from her face!

At school, the kids see her as one of them rather than a staff member, so unsurprisingly they wanted her to be in the Nativity Play. They even threatened strike action if the headmistress didn’t agree! Rosey appeared as the third palm tree from the right. That was two years ago. Last year she was dressed as an angel and this Christmas she’s been promoted to a shepherd called Frank which she says makes sense because he’ll be the one giving Jesus frankincense!

It was the school’s Harvest Festival last month. The children place harvest related things on a table like apples, oats, blackberries, sweetcorn, and bread made from locally milled flour. The parents and kids burst into laughter when Rosey appeared dressed as a farmer wearing muddy boots, baggy trousers, a scruffy jacket, and a cloth cap, whilst sucking on a sprig of wheat! Then she added her contribution to the table, a plastic-wrapped sliced loaf from the supermarket.

In the carnival procession she was a carrot, at Halloween she became a ghost, at the horticultural event she had a flower pot on her head, and at the dog show, she dressed as a cat!

That’s my friend Rosey.