189: Sally Nicholls

Nostalgia Interviews with Chris Deacy

It was a great pleasure for this week’s Nostalgia Interviews podcast to meet Sally Nicholls who was at Lampeter from 1992-95 where she studied Welsh.
Originally from Llantrisant, Sally grew up in the countryside, and she talks about her passion for horse riding, which she even accomplished in India. Sally could have gone to university in Bangor, North Wales, but ended up in Lampeter, a place with which she fell in love. Living in a Welsh speaking community was an extra bonus.
We learn that Sally cannot ever remember not speaking Welsh and has been working in the area of Welsh language education since 1996.
Sally’s favourite childhood film was The Wizard of Oz and she enjoyed Jason Donovan when she was growing up, and is, to this day, a huge fan of Neil Diamond, whom she has seen perform around the world, including at three venues in America, and nearly saw him in Australia. She has also written to another of her idols, Michael Palin, and we find out why he is the only man who has ever left Sally lost for words, and how she postponed the start of a holiday to Turkey so that she could see him in Cardiff.
We find out how Sally got the travel bug, including the three months she spent in Patagonia. It wasn’t the best time to go because it is when Covid hit, and which significantly impacted on what she was able to do while there. Sally talks about the huge differences of experience of dealing with Covid in South America compared with the UK.
Sally talks about the positive experiences that can be gleaned from that period, and we talk too about what we think it would have been like in Lampeter if the pandemic had hit then in the 1990s.
We also talk about what from Sally’s undergraduate days feels strange from today’s perspective, including the evolution over the years from cash to contactless payments.
Then, at the end of the interview, we find out what Sally’s younger self would have thought about the route she has taken, and whether she is a looking back or a looking forward kind of person, and why for Sally it is important to live in the present moment.