Fashion: Longwood tutor Anna Wallace gets a well-deserved treat

Nov 18 2010 by Hilarie Stelfox, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Make-over winner Anna Wallace is a real trooper who puts everyone else before herself. So said Anna’s mum Phyllis Kaye when nominating her for our £400 prize package of top-to-toe beauty and fashion. HILARIE STELFOX met them both

IT’S been a bad year for Anna Wallace, a 55-year-old self-employed tutor from Longwood.

Back in March she fell down a flight of stairs and fractured her left arm so severely that she had to spend a week in hospital, followed by several months recuperating.

During the long recovery, when doctors told her to rest, she was forced to keep her business going or face financial ruin. It was a difficult time.

So when Anna’s mum, Phyllis Kaye, saw our make-over competition offering £200 worth of clothes from the Edinburgh Woollen Mill in Peters, as well as a handbag, Moda in Pelle shoes and new hairstyle, she immediately wrote in.

Phyllis, of Quarmby, said: “Anna stays cheerful and is always upbeat. She puts everybody before herself. I’d just been thinking that she could do with something nice like a make-over when I saw your competition. She really deserves it.”

Anna, who has two grown-up children, is a Kip McGrath Education Centre franchisee. A trained primary school teacher, who had worked in the state sector for 27 years, she decided to become a tutor six years ago and bought the Wakefield franchise.

At the time Anna was working in Moldgreen Junior School and for the first year in business she held down two jobs.

She said: “In the second year I worked as a supply teacher while I built up the tutoring and eventually I had enough pupils to concentrate on the tutoring.”

Today Anna’s centre has more than 100 pupils aged six to 16, who study maths and English, and she employs 10 part-time teachers.

Some of Anna’s pupils are special needs and a few are cared-for children. It was while carrying a computer she intended to donate to a child in care that she had her accident.

Anna said: “I was giving a computer to the boy and decided to store it in the cellar of the education centre. I slipped half way down and smashed into a wall. I was extremely shocked and couldn’t move, but some of the surveyors who work upstairs to me heard me screaming and called for an ambulance.”

Staff at Pinderfields Hospital in Wakefield had to cut away Anna’s cardigan and coat, both newly-bought, to treat her injury. The fracture was so severe that it needed to be pinned in an operation the following day.

Anna took just one week off work although was told that she should rest for up to two months.

“I had to go back,” she said. “When you’re self-employed you have no choice.

“I was on really strong painkillers so my dad drove me to work and back every day and my mum and dad helped me vac and clean up. My staff were also really good. I couldn’t have done it without my mum and dad, they have been amazing.”

Although she’s had physiotherapy and is able to drive once more, Anna says her left arm remains weak and she’s started going swimming every morning before work to regain some strength.

She was delighted when her mum told her she’d won the make-over, and requested a hairstyle that would fit in with her new active lifestyle.

“Something that’s easy to care for after swimming,” she said.

She was also thrilled to be able to choose new clothes to replace the damaged outfit.

First port of call for her make-over was to the Mark Riley salon in Byram Street, where stylist Beth Hutton gave Anna’s straight hair a chic layered bob. The precision cut was finished using large heated rollers that gave body to her fine hair.

Then we asked Max Factor make-up artist Jo Burke to show Anna how to create a glamorous day-time look. Anna doesn’t normally wear much make-up and was impressed at the way eye shadow and mascara enhanced her eyes.

“I’ve never had my make-up done before, it was great,” she said.

At the Edinburgh Woollen Mill, Anna had £200 to spend and was astonished that we managed to find not just one but three new outfits for this. She has taken home all the outfits pictured here. Her prize also included a pair of shoes or boots from Moda in Pelle on the ground floor and a handbag from Peters.

“She looks lovely,” said Phyllis, who arrived to watch her daughter’s modelling debut. “I’m so pleased that I wrote in.”