Death came for Mum several times in the last few years. But each time, being Mum, she sent him packing and carried on with more important things (playing ballgames, walking dogs, writing poems and looking after her family). Even this time, in early December, when the doctor told us she had only weeks to live, Mum decided to prove her wrong.

Our mum, as you probably already know, was a one-off…a minuscule woman, with a mighty heart, who lived life at 100 mph and followed her own copy of the Highway Code. Whether racing amber traffic lights, rushing off to play tennis in the rain (because it “looked a bit brighter over Kemsing...”), or scissoring her socks (because they pinched her ankles), she was always true to herself.


Of all her unique qualities, it is her energy that probably defines Mum best. With her “busy mind,” as Auntie Katie used to call it, Mum worked full-time, as a journalist and then as a teacher, raised three kids (plus a string of dogs), marked schoolwork all evening and then still somehow found the drive to wrestle a succession of novels onto the page, while the rest of us slept. And her body was as busy as her mind, playing tennis and then golf well into her 80s and still making laps of the garden in the last few years at Fairmount and Lavender Fields, in an ongoing need to keep moving.


Happiest outdoors, preferably with a ball or dog in tow, Mum loved the Downs, the woods, the seaside and any tennis court or golf course that would have her. But she didn’t just find happiness in the wide open spaces, she knew to look between the cracks as well- a jug of iced coffee waiting in the fridge on a sweltering day, a round of golf snatched between showers, and a moment’s pause to watch the evening light collect in the pond along the New Walk.


Although we always joked that you needed to play a ballgame to be Mum’s friend (or at a pinch, have a dog to walk somewhere wild and lovely), she collected admirers wherever she went and had a wide and varied fan club. Mum prided herself on helping anyone in need (calmly, practically, and with no expectation of return). She always looked out for the underdog and, with an innate sense of empathy, challenged us many times over the years to be kinder, more considerate, or more tolerant than we might otherwise have chosen.


Apart from the outdoors, and the dogs and the ball games, the enduring love of Mum’s life was her family. A devoted daughter and sister to her beloved Joanie, she was married to our Dad, her Stevie, for 53 years. At the age of 29, she became a mother and, always a
doer, rather than a hugger or a sayer, she filled our childhoods with action. She took us rowing on the river at Tonbridge and climbing on the High Rocks in Tunbridge Wells and she was always as keen as us to play an over or two of cricket in the garden after tea (where as Dad predicted, she was the one who slugged a six through the the kitchen window). She arranged our yearly trips to Greatstone and Rye and later the Cotswolds. She took us to swimming and to the horses, and to ballet and gymnastics, and of course on those long rambles through the Kent countryside, always ending up with hissed directives to crouch and creep as we squeezed through barbed-wire fences and tiptoed across other people’s back gardens. She cooked us mounds of mashed potato and whisked endless bowls of Instant Whip and each morning we woke to the sound of scraped toast, creatively colourful curses and, from time to time, a tunefully whistled snippet of Madame Butterfly. And of course, she gave each of us, whatever she could, whenever we said we needed it, even her own end-of-term thank you gifts or the granny-knitted sweater off her back.


But if Mum was devoted to Emma, Paul and me, in later life she unearthed an even deeper love for her grandchildren. After warning Emma that she wasn’t the grandmotherly sort and, on no account, to expect her to babysit, Mum went on to reinvent herself as Granny: the most imaginative playmate, the number one fan, the tireless extra-set-of-parents on ever-ready and willing standby, for Abbey, and Joe and Finn and Oliver, and Atticus. To all of us, Granny was, and will always be, the beating heart of our family.


Luckily for us, along with all her other accomplishments, Mum was also a tireless writer. She leaves a vast library of journals and letters, poetry, plays and novels, some published, some performed, all carefully kept in notebooks and folders and on snipped-up squares of paper, her words continuing to flow into the very last weeks of her life. A passionate and prolific torrent that gives us a privileged glimpse inside the heart and mind of a woman who never gave up and who always resolved to do better and be kinder the next time around.


Which brings us to the all the lovely words we’ve heard time and again about Mum over the last few weeks. Her intelligence, her heart, her humour and, of course, that enormous smile. But the words we hear the most are feisty and mighty and fierce. Big words for such a tiny woman, but then Mum saw herself as a giant, and it seems we all did too. Although breaks from Scrabble or Trivial Pursuit were often needed (with much ironing in the kitchen at strategic moments), she was an indefatigable spirit, who never threw a fight in her life. The only time she ever surrendered was with her very last breath.


So Mum, wherever you are now, we hope you’re walking a dog, snatching a game of tennis and racing Death and his cronies through the traffic lights. But most of all, we hope you know you’ve won, Mum. You’ve won.