Eversley Lodge Care Home manager takes residents on a trip to see her teenage self

Time and tide wait for no man (or woman) so Danielle Bullent did not hesitate when she was offered a once-in-a-lifetime modelling engagement.

More than two decades on, the manager of Eversley Lodge Care Home, in Great Yarmouth, came face to face with her teenage self when she took residents on an outing to the town’s Time and Tide Museum.

Miss Bullent was an 18 year old, pregnant with her first son Jay, when she was invited to be a model for the museum, which was being developed from the former Tower Fish Curing Works, in Blackfriars Road, in 2003.

She explained to her residents, including the Rev John Greenway who fondly recalled his grandmother had lived near the site: “To create a mould, I had to stand for hours covered in Plaster of Paris from my shoulders to my ankles.

“They then took hundreds of photographs of my face and hands from so many different angles.”

“They then took hundreds of photographs of my face and hands from so many different angles.”

She confessed it was “a bit weird” coming face to face with her younger self.

“The model even has the same moles on its face as me and the hands uncannily resemble mine,” she said.

The model was made to look older than Danielle at the time to reflect the hard life of someone living in the rows, she explained.

Miss Bullent’s son Jay, who came on the trip, said: “I first visited the museum when I was at Wroughton Junior School, but I was unaware at that time that a model of my mum was in one of the displays.”

Miss Bullent, now 40, said: “As a teenage mother-to-be, my midwife put me in contact with the charity GFS Platform which supported young women in the town at that time.

“As part of its community engagement. the museum service reached out to GFS Platform and that was how I got involved.”

She praised the work of the charity in giving her valuable life skills and boosting her confidence, putting her on the path to a successful career.

“It increased my determination to make something of myself and not be a statistic,” she said.