My mum was the kind of mother that everyone wanted. She was immense fun and our house was filled with laughter, books, animals (gerbils, cats, dogs and guinea pigs) and a warm fuzzy sort of chaos.  She never asked people to take their shoes off and always invited whoever we had round that day to stay for dinner. As the youngest of three, there was always plenty of people around and lots going on. She wasn’t big on routine or rules and she didn’t sit down and spend hours playing with us. She was too busy making chocolate brownies, drinking G&Ts, reading or chatting to her friends. She was our mum but she also had her own life, irrespective of us and made that quite clear from the outset. She made sure that her values and the things she thought were important – family, language and literature (she was an English teacher), horses, kindness, cuddles and good manners were instilled in us as much as possible… but other than that she let us get on …