We held a small and fairly private funeral on 27 December 2023. Here is the text from the eulogy written by Louise and Robert and read by Louise:
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I know that my mum would initially have hated the idea of us all gathering to think and talk about her like this. She loved to quietly watch and observe others in social situations - but as for herself, she preferred to blend into the background.

But there was a contradiction here, because she also loved nothing more than being on a stage and performing in front of an audience. 

Emboldened by this knowledge, I’ve decided she’s just going to have to deal with the fact that we want to celebrate and remember her in a proper and formal way.

And we’d like to talk about my mum through this lens of contradictions. I’ve got 6 to tell you about today.

The first contradiction is introvert versus performer.

My mum was very introverted. She was also - something I realised as I grew older - quite shy in social situations. And she loved solitude.

As part of this, she was a bookworm, who kept lists of all the books that she read. 

I found her notes from 1983, when she had 2 small children and looked after us full time. She read 44 books in that 1 year, from Margaret Drabble and Dick Francis novels to The Billy Butlin Story. I managed about 3 books when I was on maternity leave with our younger daughter, Romy. I really don’t know how she did it.

But as well as being introverted, she also loved performing - and did not mind the size of the crowd.

One big part of this was that she performed in amateur musical theatre for a lot of her adult life. 

When I was bored at home, aged 11 or 12, she would take me along to rehearsals. I loved singing and dancing and I was desperate to join in, too. 

But mum said that I couldn’t, because you had to be 15 to join the group. Looking back, I think this might have been a way of protecting her ‘me’ time and her hobby for herself. 

But when I finally reached 15, we performed together in the chorus of The Pirates of Penzance and then later, Annie. 

Later on, Mum got into barbershop harmony singing and travelled to national and international chorus competitions. The piece of music we walked in to is the same style that she would have sung.

The second contradiction is homebody versus outdoor adventurer

My mum liked to stay at home and could sit for hours reading, thinking or watching TV. And if it was raining, she hated going out in it and would happily stay in the house all day long. (That in itself is a big contradiction for a Mancunian, isn’t it!)

But she also loved to explore, to be outside, and to see the world - in many different ways. 

We’ve chosen 4 examples of this today:

She spent most of her childhood playing out in the street in front of 22 Manshaw Road and in Fairfield Wells, the open land opposite.

She was very into sport. In her early life this was as a player, including becoming hockey captain of Manchester High School. She even briefly considered becoming a PE teacher. (It’s worth noting that if I inherited the music gene, my brother got the sport one, including the captain’s armband when he himself was at high school).

She and dad explored all angles of the Royal Parks and the Thames towpath in their early married life in Surbiton, Surrey.

She chose to spend time living in foreign cities like Paris, where she could wander around exploring on foot for hours, interspersed with stops in cafes so that she could sit and ‘people watch’, as she called it.


Contradiction number 3 is easygoing versus obstinate.

My mum wanted things to be easy and smooth, with harmony and no conflict. She was quite conflict averse. She often had  the role of peacemaker in debates or disputes and would do anything for a calm life.

But the word obstinate also springs to mind. She was fiercely independent and fiercely determined to do things how SHE wanted to do them. 

This made things a bit … interesting, shall we say … for my dad when he was caring for her in the second half of this year. 

Thinking back to easier times, she spent 2 weeks people watching on her own in cafes in Dubrovnik, in order to then travel on to the USA to see her beloved grandsons in the tail end of the coronavirus pandemic.

Contradiction number 4 is conformer versus rebel and trailblazer

My mum worked hard at school and seemed to thrive on it. After leaving school, she worked as a civil servant in the Exchequer and Audit department, which suited her enquiring mind and her ability to problem solve. Later on she put her accounting skills to good use at Parfetts Cash and Carry, where she worked for many years.

But in other parts of her life, Mum didn’t like to conform or to do things how other people did them. She might wear pool sliders with fluffy socks, use a plastic bag instead of a normal bag - or not take a bag at all and just hold a pile of things in her hand. It was common to find one of her gloves lying in a puddle outside our house.

More seriously, I also see her devoted and lifelong support of Manchester United as a non conformist act when it started out. Imagine going to the Old Trafford terraces as a teenage girl in the 60s, which was a regular occurrence for my mum. 

It would have been crowded, all standing, with no other women and girls in sight. And the men, by all accounts, did not like to bother walking to the proper toilets. Mum was a trailblazer simply by being there.

Contradiction number 5 is cool and creative versus down to earth

The arts were a big part of Mum’s life: dancing, singing, acting, and later art: this encompassed drawing, but mainly painting - and mostly landscape painting. 

I’m biased, but I think she had a real gift for it, and for me it is truly amazing that she only discovered this talent in her late 60s. The artwork on the inside pages of the order of service is all my mum’s.

And by contrast to all this creativity, my mum led a fairly quiet, humble and prosaic life in a lot of ways. She wasn’t showy. She was very down to earth. And she was not at all particular about aesthetics in the home, for example using her Christmas mugs all year round.

And the final thing I wanted to talk about is: Being a devoted parent versus being a devoted grandparent

And of course I’ve cheated a bit for this last one, because these are not contradictions.

My mum had so much love to give to her children and grandchildren. She had endless patience with me and Daniel as kids, and as a mum myself I’m really in awe of this, looking back. 

Dad describes their 2 years as expats in Vancouver, which I barely remember, as one of the happiest times of her life, looking after me and then a baby Daniel alongside other immigrant mums. 

Then when my mum first became a grandparent my mother-in-law, Shula, already a grandmother of 5, said to her: “welcome to the best club in the world”. She definitely became one of its most devoted members.

My mum had a massive sense of fun and humour and silliness and never took herself too seriously. She couldn’t really believe in recent years that she was over 70, and you really got a sense when she played with her grandkids that she thought she was one of them. 

You could say she never really grew up in that sense. She loved nothing more than playing football, witches, fairies, schools, and more football, with her grandchildren. 

And all the generations of our family are going to miss her so much.

To finish, I’m going to steal a trick from my Mum, who at my Nanna, Barbara’s funeral read a eulogy, but snuck a poem in at the end to reflect her feelings at that time.

My very short poem is Late Fragment by Raymond Carver:

“And did you get what
You wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.”