Picture this if you will. It is a Monday morning, Sept 4 1961. My first day at a new primary school, Dinas Powys Church in Wales, everything so strange, overwhelming ...and so Welsh! Everyone seems to know each other, children chattering, laughing, it’s bewildering. And there, heading towards me with a look of determination and concentration in her large brown eyes, is a skinny little girl, all elbows and knees, with short brown hair and a very big bow. I can see that she is making a bee line for me and for a second, it is terrifying! She looks so fierce! But then, her face breaks into a smile and she bombards me with hundreds of questions, puts her arm around my shoulder and introduces me to the rest of the class. This is the girl who, from that remarkable day, it was my incredible good fortune to have as one of my very best friends for the next 60 years. Like her mum, Chris was incredibly sociable, a real people person, with a strong sense of what was right and what was wrong and even as a child, if she could see that someone was left out, she would always try and include them and that is the day that we became firm friends. She brought me into the group of gossiping girls and that was that! Four of us, including Judith Naylor and Carole Symonds remained close friends until the end. Hers was the first birthday party I got invited to and in our small Welsh village, it seemed as though Chris was related to and knew everyone. Audrey, her mother, was from an old Dinas Powis family and there were always aunties, cousins, neighbours continually popping in whenever you went to call. Little Girls Club, the stables, Tennis Club, spending our Brownie subs on sweets and sitting on the gate of the donkey field on warm Summer evenings, our primary school years were intertwined both inside and outside of school. Every Friday in the Summer, my father used to finish work early and , with my mum, a gang of us kids would jam into his old estate car and head for Southerndown for French cricket on the beach, a swim and then one of my mum’s amazing picnics. We loved it! At the weekend Chris and I would get up early, 6 am, meet at Scamp Jones’s house and then carrying a bridle each, a little gang of us, average age about 10, would head off to one of the fields dotted around the village where the riding school ponies were kept. We would bridle them up and ride bareback up to the stables, with an illicit gallop across the common enroute. After grooming, feeding and tacking up, our reward would often be a free ride if there was space. We would then reverse the process at the end of the morning. We did this every Saturday and Sunday for about 5 years At school we were both good at English and History and hated Maths and knitting Every Wednesday the box of chalky string wool and short needles would be taken from the top cupboard. Chris and I would line up all afternoon to have our stitches cast on only to have to unravel what little knitting we had done at the end of the afternoon until the next week The boys got to play with plasticine! Chris loved singing and had a really tuneful voice and was good at sewing I was completely flat, but better at country dancing and performing! When we got to top class she was captain of the squirrels, and I was captain of the otters. Chris was bright, the best reader in the class and was the first to be allowed to choose her own books from the library. We used to swap Enid Blyton books,Famous Five, Five Findouters and Dog, Secret Seven, then Malcolm Saville, Monica Dickson and later Georgette Heyer. We would spend rainy days in the holidays in each other’s bedrooms ....just reading, utterly relaxed in each other’s company. As we got older we would exchange gossip, work out the facts of life together, talk about boys ... a lot, swap clothes and make up, share illicit bottles of alcohol, complain about our parents, teachers, other girls, the whole angst of our teenage years was shared Chris could also be direct and it was a standing joke that diplomacy was not one of her strong qualities. I was a fairly overweight adolescent , self conscious and so wanted to be slim. We had gone on a picnic with my family and she was tucking in with full gusto. With no hint of malice, she turned to me and said “Jane, I can’t understand why you’re so fat when I eat twice as much as you”. But you also knew that if ever you asked Chris for advice she would always give you her honest opinion, not just what you wanted to hear and when she paid you a compliment, it was sincere. Maybe honesty is the opposite of diplomacy! She could also be utterly determined and would not hesitate to question anyone in authority if she thought they were in the wrong or being unfair. I can remember her standing full square, both in primary and grammar school, hands on hips, chin jutting out, glaring at the teachers and refusing to back down, insisting they listen to her. The rest of us knew she was in the right but our cowardice or sense of self preservation was too inbuilt to adopt the same tack. She used to make me quake with fear , not for myself but for what might happen to her, but that sense of fair play and standing up for the under dog never left her. She was as brave as a lion Chris was quite gawky as a child but when we got to about 14 she blossomed, with her long, glossy dark hair, gorgeous brown eyes, white teeth and olive skin. The boys loved her! She also had various part time jobs and having this new independence made her more self confident.Neither of us particularly enjoyed lessons at the grammar school and Carole and I remember clearly that she got grade 9, the lowest grade, for most of her mock O levels. We also remember that she told her parents that a 9 was the highest grade! I think this is the first and only time I remember her telling an untruth! For both of us, the sixth form was a much happier time at school, the teachers treated you differently and all of us who did English became a really close knit group, meeting up at each other’s houses to revise and quote poetry and Shakespeare and talk about life! Chris and I went to pubs and parties, the Youth Wing, saw local bands, went shopping in Cardiff,, commiserated with each other when we got dumped, set each other up with dates,kept each other’s secrets and planned for the what happens next. Chris was always determined that she wanted to get away from our small parochial village and see the wider world. After uni we both ended up teaching in Greece, me in Athens and Chris, first in Kastoria and then Thessaloniki where she had the very good fortune to meet Frank. Andy and I went to stay and we knew straightaway he was the one. Time moved on and after Chris and Frank came back to the UK from the Middle East and had Ben, they all came to live with us in West Lulworth before buying their first house in Wimborne. We also had a baby, Jasmine, and those 6 months were like being students again, taking it in turns to cook, being new mums and both of us a bit shell shocked. I seem to remember we went to a lot of jumble sales together! Ben, you have turned into the most lovely young man but I am sorry to say that you were not a happy baby. It was hard for Chris, moving back to a new life with a new baby and not in her own home but she had endless patience and so wanted everything to be perfect for you. It says a lot that our friendship survived those 6 months! When you all moved to Wimborne we still saw a lot of each other, our oldest girls remember the scrumptious barbecues, long walks, going to the beach, the folk festival and the fantastic garden at Red Cottage. Later, when Chris and Frank had their house in Methoni we would spend lovely times together, enjoying being with such old friends, slipping easily into favourite routines of preprandial ouzos, lazy lunches, visiting the best tavernas, beaches and historical sites. Chris loved Greece and was in her element there, and she had a real and deep understanding of the people, their history and culture ...and God forbid if you pronounced a word or place incorrectly! Chris knew everyone in Methoni, spoke Greek like a native, was at the centre of the social hub and enjoyed life to the max. She really was the Queen bee! We did so much good stuff together and all those memories will be so treasured. I have never met anyone who could radiate so much energy and positivity as Chris She was the sort of girl who made things happen, got everyone organised and could light up a room. She held passionate and strong beliefs, was completely without fear when standing up to authority and didn’t suffer fools. She could be feisty, opinionated and stubborn but she was also kind, loyal, honest, had a great sense of humour and was such fun! She was the bestest of friends and our close friendship endured through the good times and the bad until the very end. She was the sister I never had. Chris’s life with Frank, Ben and Elly is not my story to tell but she had a wonderful and fulfilled family life and loved and was so beloved in return. Nobody could have loved her more than Frank, he was the perfect husband for her and Chris knew this unconditionally She thought the world of Jacob and having Ben and Elly and their partners, Hrefna and Mark, living so close by was such a comfort to her.. Her life may have been a life that was cut short but it was a life that was filled to the brim and we will miss her