So we buried my mum on Wednesday. Well technically we cremated her, but that doesn’t have the same ring to it. On account of covid, we were only allowed 20 mourners so it was a small, short affair. In view of the limitations, there didn’t seem much point pushing the boat out so we opted for a minimal 20 minute service. We had a lively and humorous funeral celebrant mastering the ceremony. Her three children delivered moving tributes. Mine is below. I’ll leave Will and Lucy to share their own. All in all, it was small but perfectly formed.

We appreciate that there are going to be quite a few who may have wished to pay their respects but couldn’t, so some time around next October we’re going to have a memorial, with a definite emphasis on drinking and laughter. So, to my extended family, mark the date - we’re going to celebrate.

Order of service

“My mum was a story teller. From my earliest memories of childhood, with such classics as Snow White and the 19 dwarves, to her 82nd birthday just 2 months ago, she loved telling stories. Often the story would grow with each telling. There were 3 occasions as a child when police arrived, guns drawn or so the stories go. As a teenager living in a world of black and white, I would colour up with shame when she’d tell one of her old stories to new people. I could never understand why her audience was so rapt for such an obvious confection.

But this was the essence of mum’s stories: she told the story to fire the same powerful emotions in the listener she had experienced. She didn’t tell it for factual accuracy (save that for the police report). I have since come round to her way of thinking, to the point where MY kids pick ME up on my tall tales. So I’d like to pay tribute to my mum with one last telling of an old story.

This is a story I am pretty sure you have all heard before. I will confess I haven’t heard it in 40 years. I did try to get mum to tell it in the last days in the hospital but it had gone. I’ll have to fill in the details as best I can but we can all compare notes afterwards. This story concerns a fateful sailing trip probably 6 decades ago if it’s a day. There were 3 of them, mum, a boy (oh he was SO good looking) and a third person who was never more than a faceless blur. Without telling anyone where they were going, they set off to sail around Angelsey, home to the most ferocious currents.

Not surprisingly they ran into serious trouble, a combination of wind and tide knocking the small boat flat, capsizing it. Mum was trapped under the sail for the best part of 8 minutes, finding a pocket of air to sustain her. Being eventually pulled out from under, she realised the enormity of the situation. Dry land was but a smudge on the horizon. So for hours the 3 of them survived on the upturned boat in an 8 foot swell. At first they told stories to keep their spirits up, but as time passed they gradually fell silent. As darkness descended they heard a faint thudding. It grew louder, then suddenly a light from the sky and a helicopter.

They winched her to safety. As she told of being pulled aboard the helicopter, mum would clasp her salt shrivelled breasts to hide her femininity and deliver the punchline in a broad northern accident: “Ey up, sonny, we’ll soon have you back on dry land”.

So why am I telling you this? Well, the truth is it doesn’t matter if she was trapped under the sail for 2 minutes or 8. It doesn’t matter if rescue came after 2 hours or 8, they don’t fish you out of the sea with a helicopter unless your life is in peril. She could have died that day. Painful though it is to stand here now and tell this story, painful though it was to chart her decline those last 17 days in the hospital, I think we can all agree. It would have been much worse for us all had she lost her life in the sea off North Wales. Two and a half minutes can’t do justice to all the amazing things she has done since, so I’ll just leave it with this: what a life THAT was.”