Ex-model EWN reader collects prize winning cheque

ONE thousand euros won’t pay for a holiday in Phuket to visit her granddaughter.

She’ll have to save a bit more for the trip she hopes to make to visit her niece in Melbourne, Australia too.

That said, Pauline Osgood was over the moon to receive her €1,000 cheque at the Euro Weekly News (EWN) Costa de Almeria office, Mojacar last Friday February 10.

More than 1,000 readers responded to a survey carried over a two weeks in the EWN at Christmas, sending their completed forms to the newspaper via the internet or by regular post.

Osgood’s handwritten form was the winning entry.

Seventy four year old Pauline, who was born in Highgate, Middlesex, lives in a rented bungalow in the Los Gallardos area. She left her Edgware school at 15 and took a job in Dixon’s camera shop.

Two years later she met her husband John who she has been married to for 56 years.

They moved to Spain together 20 years ago. “I’ve had a really hard life” Pauline, who has three sons, a daughter, and four grandchildren said.

“One son has been very ill with schizophrenia since he was 19”.

He’s now in his 50s and lives in alone in a flat in the UK with some help from the social services. She said she’d been lucky too though, because of having been able to travel a lot in Europe, especially in Spain.

Cordoba, Ronda, San Sebastian, Sevilla, Antequera, Segovia, Salamanca, Madrid, Vigo and Llerma are just some of the Spanish towns Pauline has visited.

Hard-working Pauline has had many jobs, but is now retired and volunteers at the English language library in the Artisans Centre, Mojacar Pueblo.

As an avid reader and book-club organiser, she loves volunteering at the library.

She especially likes the classics, and once attended a reading by Charles Dickens’ great-great-great grandson.

Pauline’s other volunteer work has included being a model in the PAWS fashion shows because one of her friends runs the animal charity’s cattery.

The PAWS shows weren’t Pauline’s only modelling experience though:

For eight years she travelled around working as an artists’ model for art-college students in London, and once met former British Prime Minister Harold Wilson at a fashion show at one of the colleges.

“If you are comfortable you can sit completely still for an hour at a time,” said Pauline.

She remarked that she wouldn’t go to a naturist beach, but didn’t mind nude modelling because “they’re not looking at you as a person, it’s different”.

Pauline loves writing too, and goes to a writers’ group once a week in Bedar.

She’s in the process of writing her autobiography.

One of her short stories that she’d like to get published, is a scary tale about an experience she had whilst modelling.

She likes the EWN letters page and has had letters published in the newspaper and in some UK papers.

Pauline likes the people in Spain but isn’t keen on the food. She learned some Spanish in the one-to-one classes that she used to take with a local teacher,

Jose who has since become her friend. Pauline and husband John first lived in Agua Amarga, Cabo de Gata, after having responded to a package deal property advert in their local British newspaper. S

he said she particularly likes the ‘wildness’ of the Almeria region, adding “Fate brought us here.”

Since their time in Agua Amarga, they have lived in Mojacar Playa, Antas, and in a farmhouse in the Sorbas area.

“Buying the house in Antas was the worse thing I’ve ever done,” said Pauline who had a bad experience renting out the property to British people after her and John moved to their current home, a rented bungalow in Los Gallardos.

Pauline would love to travel more. If she had won enough money, she would have bought her daughter an all-expenses-paid trip to visit Clare – her 22-year-old grand-daughter – who is doing volunteer work in Phuket (Thailand) with special needs children.

However, she will put the €700 she left after having bought a well-needed pair of glasses, into the bank to save for a trip to Rochester and the South East of England this summer.

By Susan Leach