News from Dawn SheridanI've thoroughly enjoyed seeing all the photos and reading everyone's news. I really regret, in the end, not having been able to come on the day of the reunion.

I now live in a village called Chaponost just outside Lyon with Marc (Hervé and I divorced in 1999), Liza (15) and Claire (13).

After a year as a lectrice after leaving Brum, and two years with Laura Ashley in France (trainee, and then shop manageress), I worked for a French supermarket chain as their Head of Merchandising. (I had to read up the definition in a book the day before I started the job as I wasn't sure why they'd hired me.) Six months later the MD took a liking to me and made me Head of PR (for him) and Head of Communication.

I escaped from his grasp nine months later when Liza was born and decided to stop work and concentrate on being a mum. After getting roped into doing sales for my then-husband Hervé's dad's company, I upset all the French side of the family in 1994 by handing in my notice just after Claire was born. In 1995 I set up as a freelance translator, not knowing how to type, but pretty confident in my capacity to work in French and English and - despite my initial one finger typing skills - managed to get enough work, and pluck up the courage to tell an agency that I also did interpreting (not true at the time).

I now work pretty much full-time as a conference interpreter, which is a job I absolutely adore. It's freelance so I get to choose when, where and who I work for, and, in France, strangely enough, there are hardly ever any conferences or meetings during the school holidays. I sometimes translate into French for the TV channel Euronews. (My dad reckons that World War III may occur due to my getting the wrong end of the stick when George Bush makes a speech).

If any of you drive through Lyon and feel like popping in for a drink or afternoon tea, we're just fifteen minutes from the last exit before Fourvières tunnel (n° 36 I think).