Well Jean, you’re now in a higher place, full of peace and tranquillity. Our meeting you in younger times was through the education and growing friendship of our daughters together at school, and continues today.
 
Both you and Dennis added your own sparkles of opinion about what is right, balanced with humour too. Shirley recalls visiting the smallest room in your house and finding Dennis’ certificate of commendation for loyal service during his career hung above the cistern, affording it appropriate recognition as he wryly regarded it.
 
On another occasion, knowing you and the children were regular gardeners together, two of us visited your garden secretly before dawn. We ‘planted’ about seven miniature gnomes in hard-to-find places among the foliage. We vowed never to reveal it was us, nor even to give a clue by being vague about answering if ever the subject emerged. However, we later knew you found them all, eventually, as gradually they became gathered in a cluster forming a miniature garden display as if having a powwow all of their own.
 
In their youth, our daughters had a liking for day-old chicks from Jolleys, the large pet store at Crew’s Hill, which was an outing in itself. We first kept them in open-topped cardboard boxes in the warmth of the house, with hot water bottles underneath. April was a favourite, named after the month of her birth. They grew fast.
 
The girls liked putting out their ankles and seeing the chicks jump on, and keep balance as their ankles moved. It was then that the chicks became big and strong enough to jump out of the boxes to run amok in the house. Our remedy was to place a net curtain over the box top, but one day one jumped right up and out with the white net over her head, running around like a happy bridesmaid.
 
You visited us shortly after, for our families to visit Whipsnade Zoo, as a day out together. I looked forward to our going on such a lovely occasion, but couldn’t as at that crucial time, the chickens had all grown too large to hold in cardboard boxes and some eight hours were needed to build a large run for them straight away to prevent chaos growing in the house.
 
You arrived in stylish yellow shorts, with turn-ups, bright eyed as usual, and did enjoy a splendid ladies-only time together at that zoo, while the Cockfosters chicken wire annex was under construction. Shirley recalls it as one of her most enyoyable times with you and the girls.
 
Whereas our bodies eventually wear out, pleasant memories of you linger among so many others. You and Dennis in life created distinctive marks of goodness, inherited by your two fine daughters, and to that extent your finest qualities live on every day throughout them too.
 
With love and best wishes; Wilkinson family. x