Dafne: A tribute by John Treneman
Norah Mary Dafne Treneman – to give my big sister her full name – was born on Waterloo Day, 18th June 1928 in Devon. She was the second daughter to our parents and by all accounts arrived with despatch, as strangers on the beach would go up to Mother and congratulate her on being so quick. As most of you will know her name Dafne is spelled with an F and not with the conventional Greek PH. I have long thought that a child with an unusual name is likely to develop character to preserve its identity! Be that as it may, I think most of us would agree that Dafne was a unique character, one of a kind.
After her arrival in Devon she went home to Bentham in the West Riding of Yorkshire, where Father was a junior manager at the mill of George Angus & Co, and Mother (a former pupil of Harrogate Ladies College) were well established as part of the gentlefolk of the village. Dafne’s elder sister Norma Jill was a natural blonde with frizzy hair, good at school work and became a talented musician. Dafne did not strive to compete directly with her sibling, but took an individualistic line throughout her life. The two sisters were chosen to represent their school singing with massed choirs in Messiah at a festival in Truro cathedral, so Dafne had a good singing voice too, but that was not her scene.
What do you do as a child in a Yorkshire village in the Thirties? While I might have been playing cowboys and indians, Dafne would go to the cattle market. She liked the cows, liked the farmers and liked the sound of the auctioneer’s sing song. Two stories of that time occur to me. One afternoon she brought an unknown child into the house, up to the bathroom where she poured into the basin that lovely purple anti-septic stuff called permanganate of potash and treated the child’s grazed knee. Mother was not best pleased with the stains on the wash basin, nor with her bringing a stranger into the house but did not punish Dafne, because she had been thoughtful for others.
Another time Dafne woke me up at six o’clock on a winter’s morning and took me on a, to me, mysterious trip to see the men. She made sure I didn’t catch cold by heating up milk for us before we set off. The men’ we went to see at the edge of the village turned out to be just one man, sitting in a little hut with a brazier in front of him, guarding a hole in the road. I don’t remember if we got back home without the parents discovering our illicit excursion, but I guess Dafne would have used her preparation of the hot milk as proof of her sense of responsibility. I hope she got away with it. because I as the youngest (and the boy) would never have been blamed.
In 1938 we moved to Leamington Spa, leaving country for Town life. And for the girls this meant boarding school, moving with the approach of War from Sussex to Cornwall to Acton Reynold at Shrewsbury, where Dafne met the girl who subsequently became my wife. There are stories of the two of them sawing wood with a cross-cut saw, during games periods, and I am not sure whether this was practical “War work” or perhaps a punishment for some minor infringement of school rules. Dafne certainly demonstrated character towards the end of her school years, one hot summer’s day, by pouring a bucket of water over a member of the teaching staff. What fun! She was rusticated for this prank, but allowed back to take her exams which I believe she passed with what in those days was called matric exemption.
Summer holidays, through to at least 1942 , were spent at our grandmother’s at Torbay, where Dafne made her mark as a very successful hunter for prawns. She would spend hours with a huge net scouring the rock pools. They had to be proper plump prawns” those little brown shrimps were no good at all.
After school she was determined to do her bit for our country at war, and joined the Land Army. She became an expert milker, knew what a bagwash meant on the farm and could carry a hundredweight sack of potatoes with no trouble. She used to tell the tale that an Italian prisoner of war got fresh with her, and she knocked him out with an uppercut. Sounds in character! She was very proud to receive her service medal last year and enjoyed meeting the dignitaries at the service of thanksgiving at St Mary’s in Warwick.
Next she was at Nottingham University where she took a Diploma in Dairy Management and met a lifelong friend called April, who moved to New Zealand, and whose regular Christmas letter arrived sadly the day after Dafne died.
It must have been around this time that Dafne once again brought a stranger into the family home. It was one Christmas, and Dafne had perhaps been enjoying the celebrations in Trafalgar Square before catching the milk train home to Leamington. Next morning early, Father spotted a strange man asleep on the sofa in the sitting room. Dafne had been chatting with this guy on the train and he had nowhere to go, so of course she brought him back to the house. He was an American serviceman a top sergeant. At the end of his visit he wrote in the visitors book “You are a peach”.
After a few years working for Express Dairies as a Lab analyst, and then as Librarian and in their Public Relations department, she joined the London world of PR working for major advertising agencies like Crawfords on the English Cheese Council, and Foote. Cone & Belding on Foods before switching to journalism at Woman’s Realm, Hamlyn Books and various trade journals culminating as an Editor. Her last (and longest-lasting) job was as Chief Sub Editor at Caterer and Hotelkeeper where she ruled the young reporters with a rod of iron. She retired in 1988.
She was an inveterate traveller, discovering Ibiza and Bulgaria well before the packaged tours arrived there. She was quick to learn useful phrases in any language and one phrase in Bulgarian if I recall correctly was GlacyRabatta. Recently I discovered that a waiter in my favourite Spanish restaurant was Bulgarian, and tried out this phrase on him. After a puzzled look (my Bulgarian pronunciation isn’t exactly polished) he came up with a polite English version and I quote “That is my business”. If anyone can translate it literally, please see me afterwards!
Dafne never married, though no doubt she had her opportunities. During her working years in London she generously joined forces with Pamela Warren, and Dafne became an extra parent for Philippa Warren, now better known as Pip. Who is a high-powered television executive and has flown over from Australia to say goodbye to Dafne today. Pip was indeed the apple of Dafne’s eye, and Pam her lifetime friend, with communications latterly maintained by telephone, thanks to a useful deal with TalkTalk.
We had many happy holidays at Seaview on the Isle of Wight, where the Blenkinsop family kindly lent their holiday house to our Mother for the Easter holiday. One time, Dafne and I were walking far along the beach from Seaview when she spotted a sizeable fish trapped in a rock pool by the outgoing tide. When we brought it back to the house Dafne declared it to be grey mullet while others thought it was bass. Whichever, she gutted it and cooked it to everyone’s great satisfaction.
About the time she retired, Dafne inherited our mother’s house and left London to enjoy owning her own house and to live in Leamington, with excursions in which Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand featured.
She was a member of the congregation at St Mark’s, read the lesson clearly and would provide an original slant on the prayers when it was her turn to do so. Latterly as her mobility became a problem, she was seen less at St Mark’s, but continued as a member of one of the House Groups and always had a Bible by her bedside.
Dafne was tough, she had had to be in her climb up the greasy pole of commercial life, but she was kind, thoughtful and soft-hearted. She loved animals, not just cows. At one time. which Pip will surely remember well, she had a pet rabbit. Most pet rabbits live in a hutch in the garden, right? Dafne’s pet lived in the house, free ranging, chewed the carpets and left generous droppings around the living room. She loved that rabbit unequivocally, wholeheartedly, and accepted her habits without question.
That’s how she was, wholehearted in so many ways.
Many of you will know how fond she was of her dog Liza, known in full as Liza Wigglebottom Pumpkin. How she used to send cards of congratulation to Her Majesty the Queen on the occasions of a Jubilee or a big Birthday and how the successive formal letters of acknowledgement from the Palace were framed and hung in the hall at 19 Hyde Place.
Soon after retiring to Leamington, Dafne acquired a flat in Brixham, which she enjoyed hugely, and was generous in lending to friends over the years, before her dwindling funds forced her to let it on a commercial basis.
Generous she always was and would give away her last to a friend in need.
She was a keen shopper, would know the prices of everything, and be able to compare the offers in various shops and supermarkets. A visit to Sainsbury or Asda or Tesco was for her not a chore but a huge pleasure, as dear friend and neighbour Jane Boynton recalls well. In fact Jane would drive Daf to the store in question and come back two hours later to collect her. Latterly Dafne also discovered mail order catalogues and usually bought several of any item that caught her eye. One for her and one or more at the same time ‘which could come in for presents’. She always got to know well the carers that came to look after her in the last few years and would have a useful supply of cuddly toys for their children. She did like the cuddlies for herself too, as her house testified. A lion greeted you in the hall, and a tiger kept an eye on the bathroom upstairs. And she shared her last hospital bed with a king-sized teddy bear.
She was an expert on food and drink, amassed a huge collection of cookery books which she fondly believed were of great value. She cooked well and originally, and she enjoyed food and drink. Her constitution was robust and in the last years she had two or three episodes of illness from which we all thought she could never recover – but she proved us wrong….
Until this time. On 26th August her carer found her in a poor state from which she never really recovered. Just when she was preparing to leave hospital for a spell of 24 hour care she went into a decline and died on the afternoon of Sunday 22nd November.
She was a woman of contrasts,
tough,
soft-hearted,
a fierce and outspoken critic,
with a great sense of humour
a big spender,
incredibly generous,
a wonderful human being.
full of love.
My Mother would often quote what a wise old Yorkshire woman called Maggie Capstick said about the little girl Dafne:
“she’ll mek out, will yon”
and make out, dear Dafne, you certainly did.