Liz was born with a sunny disposition in Bath in 1934. Her father William Llewellyn Jones was a master at nearby Monkton Combe School. Later on the family moved to Radley College, a boys boarding school in Oxfordshire where her father took up the post of physics master and rowing coach, after proving to be an accomplished oarsman at Selwyn College, Cambridge. At Radley Liz and her lively younger sister Diana were part of a small group of masters daughters living in the school grounds. Came rain or shine mum made the 3 mile daily cycle down the long oak-lined drive where six hundred young boys would look out to see her pass as she wound her way to her own school, St Helen’s in Abingdon, run by nuns. Having to deal with such scrutiny through those vulnerable years must have helped her develop a certain courage I feel. Radley was to make a big impact on my mother’s life, indeed she met our father there and they married in 1957 in the school chapel. This association was maintained until her death. A generation later again back at Radley I was reminded of this attention, as I accompanied mum dropping off my elder brother Steve as a new boy for his first day. Some 6th form boys remarked “wow, who is your sister? She’s attractive”. Not used to the male gaze at aged 11 and attired in 70’s hot pants with David Cassidy badge pinned to my breast, I felt quite chuffed at this unexpected attention. Dispirited I learnt that they were actually referring to my significantly more sophisticated and glamorous mother. As I reflect back to my childhood in the ‘60’s which started in Cheshire, then Ayrshire, before finally settling in Bourne End, Buckinghamshire I recall a high level of freedom reflective of mum’s relaxed parenting style. Memories of camping by Combermere lake in the grounds of a country estate with mum and dad and their friends with whom they had set up a water ski club. Jeeps and land rovers parked under the trees with 60’s music blaring out. Adults water skiing and children left free to roam as we saw fit, paddling on boards amongst the bullrushes on the lakeside. There were similar happy times at Rhosneigr in Anglesey being driven over deserted sandy beaches and dunes in an open top army jeep full of us children. Back home in Buckinghamshire mum would drive me to my primary school in this same open topped jeep. The other children in the playground could hear the throaty exhaust as we approached and would run to look. I hated the attention. A glimpse into our domestic life in the seventies would reveal what our close friend Jack described dryly as a “scorched earth policy”. In spite of being incredibly hospitable and there being a constant stream of friends staying over, there was a dichotomy; upon opening the fridge the typical offering would be a little bowl of bacon fat, a lump of drying out cheddar, perhaps some of mum’s home made ginger beer and not a lot else. Thank God for peanut butter! Mum had trained as a cook in her teenage years and in spite of the scorched earth policy we did in fact eat well. Although I do recall one gastronomic gaff, when she tried to make marmalade in the pressure cooker and the pressure valve became blocked and hot marmalade shot out like an erupting volcano all down the 1970’s flowery vinyl wallpaper. Thereafter rivulets of sticky orange would run down the wall whenever the kitchen became steamy. I never remember mum shouting, or getting angry, she had an unbelievable serenity that meant she was rarely flustered and took life in her stride. One exception was when she had to sit in the passenger seat when I was learning to drive. Even when, years earlier her sister Diana announced that three of her young children would be coming over for the entire summer holidays from Philadelphia to stay with us, mum thought on her feet and put them into the local primary school with me and bought them tortoises and guinea pigs to keep them amused. On another occasion, only my mother could say that she had had the most lovely sailing holiday in Norway when the photos revealed a week of leaden skies and non-stop cold rain, and showed her at the helm with an umbrella to keep the worst of the rain off, and plastic Sainsbury’s bags over her already sodden gloved hands. For most people the images would have seemed miserable yet she was able to find joy. What distinguished my parents for me was that they both had a great sense of adventure and enjoyment as did their close-knit group of pioneering friends with whom they would join for walking weekends in the Lake District or Scotland as well as ski holidays and sailing adventures well into their eighties. Mum also enjoyed accompanying my father when his work in the airline business took him to America and the Middle East to visit clients. I don’t want to give you her full cv other than to say that mum filled her life with unpaid charitable work. All of her life she was involved in politics ( dare I mention the Conservative Party?), education, museums, art, and more besides. Dad referred to her affectionately as “my Busy Lizzie!” As well as Bucks County Council where she retained poise in a mostly male environment and later Dorset County Arts Society Chairman, there was one post which I was not so happy with, which was Chairman of governors at my own high school in High Wycombe where we were awkwardly told by the headmistress that I was the naughtiest girl in the school. Moving on …. Somewhat naively mum was once banned from a pub. Not just any pub but the most-oft used watering hole for all us residents of Ringstead Bay, Dorset where we would spend our summer holidays. Our evening ritual would be to saunter over the coastal path for about a mile and a half to the local pub ‘The Smugglers Inn’. Before we knew it mum, resembling the Pied Piper, was unwittingly leading a group of young hangers-on. On arrival the barman promptly banned her for bringing in under age drinkers. Within a day things went from bad to worse, a friend and I, both working at the pub got sacked separately, him for getting drunk and me as a waitress, for handing out burnt chips on a baking tray to friends listening to the guitarist in the restaurant! So from that day the pub landlord decreed that anyone resident in Ringstead Bay was banned from the Smugglers Inn. But I know that more people will remember her for her sweet nature than for instigating the infamous pub ban for Ringstead Bay residents. When Dad retired they moved from Buckinghamshire to Dorset. Mum nursed dad for 10 years as he became progressively more demanding with Alzheimer’s, and this led to a further house move from an idyllic spot where the river Piddle ran through the garden to a central village location in Tolpuddle. Where we joked that mum was the only Tory in the village! The moving-in date was Christmas Eve. Her Dorset friends were amazed at this choice and asked her what she would do about Christmas dinner. Mum unflustered responded that Tom and his Italian family who were arriving that day would be helping her open boxes and afterwards they would go to the pub. As a wartime baby, mum was quite a collector, she once disclosed to me that she’d wanted to live in a museum-like space. She was quite a family archivist and meticulously organised. It seems appropriate that as a Bucks County Councillor, she was also Chairman of the County libraries and Museums, and later on after moving from Bucks to Dorset she was very involved with the Dorset County Museum. Indeed at home, drawers were full of memorabilia and clutter, much to my father’s frustration! To demonstrate recently I came across a stack of cards and letters congratulating her and dad on the birth of their baby girl Caroline, so mum had kept those cards for 63 years!! When Dad died in February 2017, mum had suffered heart failure three months earlier, worn out by caring demands. There are few women who could have coped with what she went through. But with time she re-gained strength like a pheonix rising from the flames. A year later an old Radley boyfriend and friend of my father’s noticed dad’s obituary in the old school magazine which led to a re-kindling of a flame that had shone in the cellars of the mansion block in their teens. She re met Robin GA after an absence of 70 years. Mum was his alpha and omega. Now unhindered she seemed to go through a second adolescence and moved from Dorset to alongside me in Kent and saw much more of my family and developed a strong relationship with her great granddaughter Anoushka who used to stay over for sleep-overs. She drove over the country visiting friends had seemingly boundless energy, partied, mucked up her shoulder playing silly games, and pranged two cars in two years. We did become somewhat concerned at her driving around the country in her late eighties, this concern was reinforced when a visit to Dorset resulted in a significant side encounter in a a rural lane which bent the passenger door into a c shape and deployed the air bag. Mum with warlike spirit rummaged through her sponge bag to find her nail scissors and cut away the inflated air bag, put her coat on and prepared for a draughty drive back to Kent. The car was subsequently written off and replaced. But of course it wasn’t her fault! ….Nor was the next accident. Coming out of a junction mum hit what she thought was a rock by the side of the road and carried on to the village. In no time the Goudhurst Facebook page was hot with this news, asking if anyone knew who the hit and run old lady was in the white polo emerging from our lane. I managed to diffuse the situation and got in touch with the people concerned and the insurance companies battled it out between themselves. Subsequently when in the village she would park the dented side against the steep grassy bank, so people wouldn’t know that it belonged to the ‘hit and run old lady”. The wise decision that mum should stop driving at aged 89 led to her move from living beside me in a rural spot in Kent to an assisted care home in Hghgate. She embraced this new challenge with her typical gusto. Here she would be living close to brother Steve and they were both looking forward to sharing activities together. Sadly this was short lived as when mum died barely four months later, she still hadn’t unpacked all the boxes containing at least 50 paintings that lay stacked inside the door. My last image of her aside her final days in hospital was of her smiling and waving from the back of a cab heading back to Highgate from the English National Opera after seeing the ballet Giselle. Lorraine, her good friend from Dorset and I waved her off both agreeing what a stalwart she was. Later that week mum went by train to Dorset to join friends celebrating Burns Night. Mum was living life to the full right to the very end and I’m proud of her. Although saying she was never a city person and much preferring the country mum serendipitously ended up spending her final months in the exact same place her mother and grandparents had lived. Indeed her mother was christened in this very same church. It’s funny how mum’s life has gone full circle.