Our mother was very much a product of her generation and class. Born in the inter war years in the countryside of Cheshire, she was always a country girl at heart. 

She was tough, stubborn and she was certainly not squeamish. Even to the end, if ever she saw a spider in the house, she would not hesitate to grab it with her bare hands and throw it outside. 
 
She was the third born of 10 children, in a home with no running water and certainly no electricity. 
With so many mouths to feed she quickly learned how to fully utilise all parts of a dead animal. 
Even in my childhood, liver, kidney, heart and sometimes pigs’ brain were still a part of the weekly menu. 
 
Brought up in the country and before the NHS, she would always claim she came from hardy stock. 
As a girl, she would eat carrots pulled from the earth and simply wiped on grass. 
School involved a daily hike of 3 miles in all weather and in wooden clogs. In those days, a motorised vehicle was a rarity. 
 
She left school at 14 and went to live and work on a local farm. 
When her mother died, she returned to the family home to help look after her younger siblings; but after her father was later taken into hospital having suffered a stroke and never returned home, she was forced to head off into the wider world. 
 
She found work in Mold then in Bury but felt trapped and directionless, and so the thought of joining the army led her to Manchester one day, but the recruitment office was closed. 
However, as luck would have it, the navy recruitment office was still open. So she happily enlisted into the Wrens and a life of adventure far beyond the small world she had only ever known. 
 
Many of you here today will know our mother from her navy days. 
Being a Wren was a very important part of her life and identity, and one that filled her both with pride and happiness.
She embraced her new found family and was always grateful for the stability and security it gave her. 
It was early on in her navy years that she met our dad, but she wasn't ready to leave her new found family, and so she remained a Wren for several more years.



Fortunately, our mum and dad would eventually reunite. 
 
She left the navy in 1959, and went on to become a wife and mother. 
 
Early family life was spent in Paris and Scotland before settling in Fareham in 1968. 
From the outset she was very much the matriarch of the family, and as her family doctor later commented, knowing both our mum and dad for many years, it was quite clear who wore the trousers in their relationship.
 
She was always a hard worker, and although with our dad away at sea, looking after Nigel, Lorraine and me was not enough for her, and so she took a job at the Ultra television factory where she worked for 25 years. The tedium of the work was counter balanced by the sense of community and friendship she had with the girls on the production line. 
That all came to an end in 1992 but she continued to work, as a cleaner, well into her 70s. 
 
Her later years were spent travelling with her Wren family around the world. This gave her great joy.
Even with the onset of dementia she would often ask me, when mention of a foreign country "I have been there, haven't I?". 
 
Our mother may have been short, only 4'10" at her height, but she more than made up for it in both her strength of character and her physical strength.
I remember as a youth whenever I struggled to open a jar, she would always grab it off me and open it with ease. 
 
She did not suffer fools gladly and remained true to her Northern roots to the end, always bluntly telling people what she thought. 
She would also say that northerners will talk to anyone, and our mother certainly proved that. 
 
 
In her later years she started to slow down, and with that was able to reflect on her life. 
With more time she showed more affection to those she loved, and she fully appreciated the full life she had lived.  
 
She instilled a real sense of independence, honesty, fairness and hard work within me and has been the most important influence in my life. 
 
Our mother once told me that her 3 children were the best thing that ever happened to her, but I can say that for the 3 of us, she was the best mum we could ever wished to have had.