Mary Louise Simpson was born in Eltham South East London in May 1948. She was one of two children of William known to many as Mac and Florence sometimes known as Tina McCarthy. Mary had one sister Dorothy who is here with her husband. Mary’s mum now lives in Harrogate in a sheltered accommodation. From being a young schoolgirl Mary had a lifelong friend in Sandy and after Mary met Geoff it was only natural that Mary would need to seek Sandy’s approval. But before that we need to tell of how Geoff and Mary met. It was a rainy afternoon when Jeff’s best friend brought his girlfriend on his scooter to visit Jeff. When Jeff answered the knock at the door he was met by two very bedraggled people. Jeff’s friend Ted made a fatal mistake and introduced Mary. Only a week later Mary was on the phone leaving messages inviting Jeff to a dance. Despite two left feet Jeff took up the invitation and very soon a romance started. As I said Mary took Jeff to Sandy for approval and once Mary left school and following rows with both sets of parents they both left their parents homes and set up home together in a small flat. Jeff and Mary were married just 18 months after they first met in November 1965. Only child Katharine was born soon afterwards and for a time. The three lived with Mary’s family. When Katharine first started school there was a great aversion to this and Mary home-schooled Katharine for three years and Katherine tells me she was very patient as she taught her to read and write. Mary had left school with 6 GCE’s and a great ability in shorthand and typing. Despite a wide variety of jobs including work in a care accessory shop – changing tyres etc – Mary continued to improve her typing skills and eventually took and passed her RSA3 and achieved 95 words per minute in typing. Mary worked in London and loved it. She progressed from manual typewriters to the new-fangled electric typewriters and then to the very early word processors. This skill was to stand her in good stead when she started to work in South Kent College teaching IT and word processing. As I already said Jeff and Mary had just one daughter Katharine who is married to Martin and there are three grandchildren Daniel, Rachel and Thomas. Daniel has blessed Mary and Jeff with a great grandson Aidan James who is just 2 years old. As a young teenager Mary had a great interest in dancing and Jeff tells me he can just about manage a waltz and a shuffle. Surprisingly despite the interest in dancing Mary never developed a passion for music although on holiday in her favourite Jersey they loved to see the Black and White minstrel. Jeff and Mary were members of the Wild Country Road Show – a country band with Geoff on bass guitar and Mary on drums. It is 7 years since Mary and Jeff made the brave decision to come and live in Spain. This decision was perhaps helped by Mary’s heart attack whilst teaching and Geoff developing Angina. They both felt the warm weather would be healing. Mary only returned to England twice since they moved here. The first time was for the funeral of Jeff’s mum and the second was in April this year when Mary travelled alone. At the end of the visit Mary was on her way to the airport for a two pm flight when the volcanic ash closed all flights at 12 noon. Mary phoned Sandy and they spent six wonderful days waiting for flights to be resumed. What a precious time they had together. Mary was a much loved wife, mother, grandmother and friend. She will be sorely missed.