Alice in Wonderland byWyn Evans Let me start by paying tribute to a local success story, one that hails from and has added to the quality of life in CF23: The Barinowsky School of Ballet (BSB). Yesterday, Sunday 26th March, it seemed that Penylan had moved en masse to Barry; to the Memorial Hall, to be specific. The reason for this exodus was that the BSB was staging two showings of its ballet ‘Alice in Wonderland’, at 1pm and 5pm. I didn’t actually perform a headcount but there must have been seventy or eighty kids there aged from four or five to eighteen plus. The Memo (as the Memorial Hall is now branded) was packed up to and including the very back of the balcony upstairs. My daughter, The Girl has been a member of the BSB almost her whole life. She has her 17th birthday tomorrow and has been a keen ballerina since she was four or five. The s chool offers its dancers the chance to study for examinations under the aegis of the Royal Academy of Dance and also gives its kids the chance to perform little shows at the end of each term, keeping parents and others in the loop and allowing the kids the opportunity to show their learning. Then, every few years the school has taken over the Memo and put on what can only be called ‘A Production! Capital ‘A’, capital ‘P’’. Add to these events a summer school most years and annual completion of RAD examinations and you will gather just what a committed and creative school the BSB is. I’m tempted to write that it is Penylan’s best kept secret except, of course, that it is no secret: if you’re a parent of a little girl, at the risk of typecasting , you will have discovered the BSB. (I’ve seen some little boys attending too, though it does seem to be more a girl thing.)
Now, regular readers will recall that The Girl has Down Syndrome. All that time ago when The Boss and I were new to parenting and looking around for activities for our girl, we found that Penylan was a wonderful place to bring up a child and over the years it became quite a long list of activities: Waterbabies begat swimming club, Music with Mothers (and dads), baby yoga, Brownies and Guides, athletics at NIAC, Twisters Trampolining, a choir, judo, guitar lessons, and there were many more. Then of course there were clubs and societies aimed at kids with disabilities in general and Down Syndrome in particular. We wanted The Girl to crossover between the mainstream/typically developing and specialist/disability worlds, and for her to be at home in both. I think it’s fair to say that I didn’t always get it right for her. There were a few bust-ups with mums or dads
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