The one in which we celebrate St David's Day

THERE is a picture of me from the 1970s, a weekly newspaper clipping yellowed by age, which shows me and my classmates dressed up for St David's Day.

Many of the girls are wearing traditional costume, stove pipe hats, lace pinnies, checked shawls.

Some of the boys are wearing rugby outfits of varying club colours.

All very understandable. So will someone tell me how my friends and myself are dressed as pirates? Bandanas, cutlasses, one lad has a toy parrot jauntily sellotaped upon his shoulder. Our grins are confident, like we were the only ones who knew that at some point in the future, there would be an International Talk Like A PIrate Day.

Time has erased from my memory what on earth was going on. I suspect it involved some kind of St David's Day performance with which our parents and schoolmates were tortured.

The godson giggles when I tell him the story.

These days, St David's Day celebrations at school are a little less eccentric. The boys will, as one, turn up as mini Warburtons and Halfpennys.

Falling as it does, slap, bang in the middle of the Six Nations, there is considerable peer pressure. The godson would not think of doing anything else.

While the vast majority of the girls will conform to the idea they should be mini versions of Sidney Curnow Vosper’s painting, Salem- mInus the image of the devil in the shawl naturally - others will sport sparkly Welsh flag cowboy hats.

Or, whisper it softly, a Welsh flag onesie. OK in small children, not OK for grown women going to the Spar to buy milk.

Despite living in a predominantly English-speaking area, Godson is a dab hand at the Welsh. His mother's fridge has certificates for his Welsh-speaking ability all over it.

And he loves Welsh history. A recent present of a book detailing the history of the Welsh Valleys - with illustrations of miners and castles - proved a hit.

Godson is in his element. He is about to tell me the history of St David's Day, and I had better be listening carefully.

There'll be a test at the end.