1. Thank you for your many creative talents. Dunearn must have been the most colourful primary school in history. I’ve learned there is nothing that can’t be improved with glue and tissue paper. You’d have been in your element creating Pinterest-worthy window displays during lockdown. 

2. Thank you for your way with words. Surprisingly you did sometimes struggle to vocalise your thoughts! It was times like these that I’d find a poem pinned to the fridge when I got home from school. Thank you for showing me there is a way to express myself when the words won’t come out my mouth. 

3. Thank you for being ‘that’ mum, even when I wanted the ground to swallow me up. Like when you entered that yummy mummy contest in Ibiza after a few vinos and proceeded to sashay down the catwalk wrapped head to toe in toilet roll, telling the judges you were ‘just a mummy’.

4. Thank you for your DIY efforts. There was no fancy dress/Easter bonnet/Easter egg competition we didn’t storm!  I remember the elaborate ‘Miss Print’ dress you lovingly pressed from issues of the Fife Free Press. Or the time Gary and I rocked up to a Halloween party dressed as a bird and a bee, blissfully unaware as to why everyone thought it was funny. My numerous bedroom murals were the envy of kids everywhere! 

5. Thanks for being so involved, in everything! Whether you were helping out on a school trip or make-up artist extraordinaire at many a dance show, you were just always there. I'm grateful for your nepotism and my lead roles in the church nativity plays, when my school teacher wouldn't even cast me as an angel because I wasn't tall and blonde. "This is Teri Laing reporting from Bethlehem" may just have been the start of my journalistic career! You and Auntie Joan were the A Team. 

6. Thank you for being such a stylish mama and for passing down your magpie tendencies and love of a good bargain. I’ll miss rummaging through charity shops with you and like to think you’ve found an epic hippy market wherever you are.

7. Thank you for being there whenever I needed you, and sometimes when I didn’t - like being pulled out of work/summer camp/conferences for an ‘emergency phone call’ that turned out to be my mum just wondering how I was! I’ll miss calling you on my way home, when I’m out with the dog, or with some minor baby update that no one else will find nearly as thrilling. 

8. Thank you for giving my husband 11 out of 10 on first meeting. Others haven’t fared so well. Thanks for accepting our elopement and lack of fuss (I know how you liked the fuss) and for being a loving, far-less-scary-than-anticipated - mother-in-law. Gareth is also grateful for his DMs being polished whenever he visited. Perhaps Dad can keep that going?! 

9. Thank you for your kindness and understanding during pregnancy and my first year of motherhood. When the world and it’s granny bombarded me with unsolicited advice, you were an unexpected source of calm and the sounding board I really needed. I will always cherish that. 

10. Thank you for showing up for us this last year, even on the tough days when you were suffering and in a lot of pain. I’m so grateful you got to meet Eli and for all the laughing, silly songs and dancing that we had together. In time, Charlie and Oliver will tell him all about their amazing ‘nanny’ and what a legend she was.