Who We Are

Welcome to Twins World UK's Blog! 

From West End to Website!

The Skinner Twins is what we were known as, inseparable and the best of friends from toddler through to teens to adulthood and beyond.  Born on Christmas Day, ‘late December back in 63’ our Mum always says what a night!  With five minutes between us, one of us was almost born on Boxing Day – that would have been me!  So not only did we bring a double expense at Christmas time for our parents, they also had the added expense of our birthdays as well.  We were the first set of twins to be born at Hammersmith Hospital on Christmas day.  The Mayor of the district gave us both a teddy bear each and to this day – 48 years later we still have our bears!

We did everything together growing up and were dressed alike most of the time and despite being fraternal twins we were very much alike and were able to fool boys in the school playground and some members of family.  Even when looking back at old photos these days there are many times when we are even unable to identify who is who and have to ask our older sister. 

We had the ‘Twin thing’, the connection that made us stick together.  We attended a dancing school, performed in local musical theatre productions which later gave us the opportunity to appear in the West End at Adelphi theatre in the London Production of The King and I, starring Peter Wyngarde (Jason King fame) and Sally Anne Howes (Chitty Chitty Bang Bang fame) where we played Siamese twins.  We were 9 years old if I remember right.  Being twins we were also invited to audition for many productions and we appeared in a BBC Children Serial Drama, ‘Kizzy’ and television TV commercials.  I don’t remember there being so many twins back in those days.  Neither of us pursued a career in theatre or TV and in fact our career paths took us completely away from each other and in totally different fields.

As teenagers we fell for the same boys and invariably, unintentionally purchased the same, if not similar, clothes and would very often have the repetitive argument of, “I had it on first, you change!”  Not sure how we resolved those issues!

One thing for sure is that the connection has always remained.  When one of us was pregnant the other would experience labour pains or morning sickness. We even purchased the same greeting cards for people, despite not living in the same town.

We haven’t lived close to one another since our mid twenties but visits and phone calls and now the Internet and social networking has maintained our communication.  More recently is the creation – Dee’s creation I should say, of Twins World UK which is a wonderful revamped venue that she developed in 2004 with twins in mind.  There are fabulous and very uniquely designed greeting cards that can be given to twins and others that have been purposely made for twins to give to various recipients, such as family members or even their teacher!  She is celebrating all things twins and recently added her own exquisite jewellery creations for family members of twins and for twins.   I am very proud of what she has created and tickled pink that she has invited me to help her and we are able to work together even though we live in different countries!

We have both agreed that when we now talk about growing up we find it very difficult to say ‘I did’ or ‘I had’ it is always ‘we did’ and ‘we had’.  We both do it unknowingly and when people who don’t know our background pick us up on this, we are still proud to say, “Oh! I’m a twin!”

We are very excited to be able to blog and interact with other mummy bloggers and along the way share some of our treasures that we are showcasing in the store.  Twins World UK With 6 children between us the oldest 22 and the youngest just 7 years we hope that we can contribute to the mum world of blogging.

Dee & Karen