How can I sum up what Barbara meant to me in a few words. I can’t, so I’ve decided to write a few things that I remember most about her.
Barbara was 6 years older than me, so growing up she was the big sister I looked up to. We

shared a bedroom for many years which was often a challenge but seldom resulted in an argument. Mum had warned Jean and I early on that we were never to upset Barbara in case it brought on one of her Asthma attacks. I’m not saying that she took advantage of this but lets just say that if there was
an argument, she usually won it.

When we were children, Barbara used to be an early riser which Jean and I used to our advantage. At the weekend she would get up first and subsequently bear the brunt of Mum’s bad mood. Mum thought that she had lazy daughters and that we ought to be helping her around the house instead of laying in bed. By the time Jean and I got up Mum had calmed down, having vented her anger on Barbara. Much to our amusement and Barbara’s annoyance.

Barbara’s sense of humour will be one of the things I remember most about her. She could always see the funny side of things even when they were at their most dire and the stories she told of the many disasters that befell her, couldn’t fail to make you laugh.

Her catch phase was “Just my luck” and invariably if something could go wrong for her, it did. The stories of her disastrous holidays are too many to mention but one story that sticks in my mind was a particular cruise she went on. She’d always wanted to visit Madeira and for her, this was going to be the highlight of the cruise. However when the ship arrived at Madeira she was confined to her cabin with food poisoning and never managed to visit it ! It could only happen to her!

Barbara had to cope with so many illnesses in her life and I don’t know where she got the strength to cope with them all, but she did. I remember once asking her where her medicine cabinet was as I needed an aspirin. She said she didn’t have a medicine cabinet but a medicine wardrobe, and she wasn’t joking. She had to take so much medication that it wouldn’t have fitted into a normal medicine cabinet.

Her enthusiasm, generosity, kindness, compassion are just a few of the qualities that made her the unique person she was and words can’t express how much I’m going to miss her.