Memories of Aunty Marilyn... where to start… Her laugh and her smile, her sense of fun, her grace and patience, her determination and strength… but most of all her overwhelming kindness. Perfect (for me) hours spent with Aunty Mal, as we cut out pictures for our scrapbooks of horses, naming every single one of them, her perched on my bed creating night time adventures of Mr Marzipan… Us desperately cleaning Uncle Chris’ dart which had inexplicably fallen in to a bucket of oil under a dartboard, which I had been told not to play with… not sure how that happened! Endless family fun at Christmas, holidays and visits... (James and I both know that it was my brother Christopher and Alison that were the really the trouble makers!) Her giggling at us when we ‘fixed’ the Countdown board game letters, so that they spelt Countdown and at her Mum and Dads (Betty and Charles) wonder at how that could have happened! The last picture I took of Aunt Marilyn was of her and Uncle Chris sat on my Mums sofa holding hands, I just remember all through my life them holding hands…. Worrying as a small child when they were arguing over a map in Oxford, then with relief seeing them holding hands and laughing just after… me trudging along with a teenager’s enthusiasm of long family walks across Wales and they were holding hands… The world would truly be a better place if we all could walk through life holding hands with our soul mate as they have. My Dad also loved Aunty Marilyn and when I called her from his Hospice to say he had died, her first reaction was that she was coming to look after me (she was in London and I was in Carlisle) but that was Aunty Marilyn her first thoughts was always for others and it’s something that I will never forget. x