A Tribute to Chris and a message for her Family…
 
Chris and Dave, in many ways, are probably the most important neighbours we have ever had. Living in Basingstoke, teaching art for the first time and trying to complete a PhD was all new to us in 1974 and our next-door neighbours: Chris and Dave, Dawn and Ruth, took us under their wing. We became a part of their family and they of ours. And they have all held a strong place in our hearts ever since.
 
We had so many laughs together, especially over our weekly supper club. We had three teams: Chris and Dave, then Dawn and Ruth, then us, Adrian and Kitty. We only had one rule: you had to cook something you had never cooked before! That often led to a great deal of laughter and even some tears of frustration when having to start cooking a meal all over again!
 
But Chris seemed to take everything in her stride. After supper, when Dawn and Ruth had gone to bed, we would watch a film on TV. Chris rarely saw the end of the film as warm and cosy, she would fall asleep. We had never met anyone who could sleep so soundly. Dave would carry her upstairs in a fireman’s lift, without waking her at all. In the morning we would tell her the end of the film.
 
As Adrian’s thesis neared completion at the end of 1976, Chris decided to learn to type so that she could number the pages. In those days that was no small challenge! As we did not have word processing, the whole thesis was typed on an Olivetti typewriter and any mistakes meant the page had to be done all over again. Rather like our cooking sometimes!
 
On the day we were supposed to hand in the finished thesis to Adrian’s supervisor in Brighton, we needed Chris’s calm humour more than ever. Early in the morning we got up to make the drive to Brighton and found that our car was stolen. Panicked, we knocked on Chris’s door and she came down in her dressing gown. But she was fully awake this time and in reply to our despairing cry of “What shall we do?” She took charge. “Well, the first thing is this. Come on in, have a good strong cup of tea and I will give you each a Valium tablet! Then we will work out what to do so you don’t miss the deadline.” The Popley Doctor in those days was commonly referred as Doctor Valium, and Chris, who would later train to be a nurse, was already well aware of how to care for people in an emergency!
 
Moving away from Basingstoke did not end our friendship and, even with spells abroad, we always managed to catch up from time to time and stayed with Chris and Dave to attend Eton Ridguard’s funeral, as the Ridguards had also become part of our Popley family.
 
Even after a long gap since seeing each other, it was always as though
we all still lived right next door.
 
On retirement in 2007 Adrian and I entered on another adventure: living in a narrow boat for half of each year. Chris and Dave, with their wonderful camper van, understood all too well this urge to travel and in 2017 they joined us in the Peak District for a few days. Here she and Dave had us clambering over the moors, with their abandoned millstones, which Dave explained were due a downturn in the economy back in the 18th century when finished but unpaid for stones were left on the hillside. In the evenings, once again, we took it in turns to cook for each other, with supper, either in their camper van or on our boat. Over those days we were reviewing and renewing our lifelong friendship with such gratitude and affection.
 
We cannot now really experience Chris as absent, because she and Dave and Dawn and Ruth have always held such a place in our hearts and always will. In that sense she will always be present to us and the memory of her will always bring a smile and the warmth of love.
 
On our boat Chris was much amused by a piece of wall art by the writer and sculptor, Brian Andreas, which reads: “There are things you do because they feel right & they may make no sense & they may make no money & it may be the real reason we are here: to love each other & to eat each other's cooking & say it was good.”