The obituary notice of Mabel ARMER

I'm sad you've gone to Heaven. I wish we remembered you our Nanny more clearly but I was only just five years old when we said goodbye.

Where I want to have memories, I simply have feelings, feelings of your being there, and because you were there, the feeling is a safe and harboured one. There's the feeling of windy beaches in winter, the strong sensation of pulling out with our chests at the reins you hold us with as we round a busy corner on the way to Walking Bottom. I loved feeling that safe.

Then I remember some of the rituals we had: teatime – bacon on an orange and white plastic plate, fish fingers, toast with fish paste or the excitement when black birds broke the foil tops on the milk bottles at the front door – evidence that they'd got there first.

In that front garden, you offered me a pleasure for life – to eat outside whenever the weather allowed it. And thus we ate even our breakfast out in the front garden and climbed onto the table afterwards to hail passers by. .