Hi everybody, I'm Eleanor, I guess you could refer to me as Katie's last employer, but I don't like that very much. She was part of our family and we absolutely adored her. Me and my husband, David, and our children Carys and Sonny, have known her since early 2016. There's so much to say about all the brilliant and funny times we had, and how great she was. But, I thought I'd start with the photos I've posted because they say so much. 

Firstly, let it be known that Katie was a brilliant crafter, beautifully creative and brought nature and the outdoors into pretty much anything she did. I used to LOVE coming home to her and Carys' creations, from huge castles to fairy gardens, feather animals and ridiculous things made out of things they found on riverbeds and in bushes. So many of them are around the house still. 

Secondly, I don't know anybody with a talent for taking a reasonable baking session and turning it into a jog though a cabaret dressing room covered in glue like one of Katie could. No plain cake ever left the kitchen. Every single one was purple, or red, or covered in inedible glitter, or strawberries rolled in chocolate then glitter then chocolate sauce. Uncle Ant's ant cake was no different - a log of sponge with breadstick legs, orange and white piped icing piled on its head, googly eyes and candles for antennae. The crowing glory being that it was made on our chopping board which absolutely stank of garlic. We all ate it and laughed a lot, including Katie. 

Katie's many talents included a key one - she was a master of distraction. She could turn a really rubbish atmosphere or something upsetting and scary for the kids into a game, a song or a laugh within a few moments. I suspect this was a talent she deployed elsewhere, and I know that she never liked to think about the bad stuff too much. 

She's left a huge, huge legacy here in our household. She's everywhere - on our walls, in our bookshelves, in our wardrobes (she'd go through my bags for the jumble and take out and put back things she still liked the kids wearing!). She even re-arranged our furniture once when we were out, because she liked it better with the table that way. We never changed it back. She'll be with us forever, and I dearly wish she was still here now. There will never be another Nanny Katie, not for us.  She made us all call her Nanny Katie, in full, all the time. We loved it. 

I'll never forget the sheer trauma of having to navigate her diary - we bought her a new one every year and it looked like 10,000 spiders had made notes on every page almost instantly, but she never got a date wrong. She never, ever let us down and she picked us out of some real holes sometimes.

I'm glad I got to spend so much time with her this past year. It was an honour to take her to chemo, although I think I was more scared walking into the ward than she was. She was so bloody brave. We were privileged to know her and my kids were so loved by her. 

Will look forward to celebrating this marvellous person at her party. I'll bring a suitable cake. As she'd say, "Jolly Good".

Eleanor, David, Carys, Sonny and Poppy's actual friend, Mack. xxxxx