Here is the text for Jeff's tribute to Ann.

Jeff’s Tribute to Ann
Good morning.
Can I welcome everyone that has taken the time and trouble to join us today here in St Andrews, Cobham and online.
To friends in Feckenham in the village Hall and to those joining from their homes wherever you are.
Welcome to this celebration of Ann’s life.
If you can please forgive but I have pre-recorded the major part of this eulogy. I’m sure a number of you can appreciate, the chances of me getting through this in one piece are virtually nil, and I do want to do Ann justice with this short tribute, rather than having you watch me do some kind of distracting emotional tight rope act.
The other reason is that this is being recorded, and therefore can be watched sometime in the future.
I’d like to think in perhaps by Annabelle, by Henry and any other currently unknown Grandchildren.
In which case kids, hello this is your Grandad’s tribute to your remarkable Grandmother Ann.
Ann was born in Kings Norton, Birmingham in October 1958. For parents Ivor and Dorothy Evans she was the 3rd of 4 children. Their union was the uniting of Welsh and Birmingham Irish traditions. The latter, being her mother’s persuasion, held sway and so her early and highly formative education was at the Holy Child Catholic School, Edgbaston, a denomination she was later to reject owing to its then lack of tolerance of divorcees and the gay community.
What did stick was the school motto “Actions. Not Words”, together with her mother’s selfless role modelling of what Christian love and service can look like.
Of the many cards and messages (and thank you for all the love, prayers and support we have received over the past 3 years, it has made a real difference)
Of the many cards and messages; the overwhelming sentiment has been that of Ann’s acts of continuous micro love in the practical support given to numerous people who entered her orbit over her many years.
We hear of micro aggressions as the basis of discrimination, but here was a woman who demonstrated the exact opposite. Not for her the showy event, or ego posturing at meetings – indeed meetings were to be avoided if at all possible; rather, just small practical, pragmatic actions - a visit, a card, a coffee morning, a traidcraft stall here, a foodbank donation there and often spontaneous.
On reflection now, this is the very definition of Christian humility.
It’s not until you lose this kind of person do we realise fully the impact of their continuous devotion to selfless loving action. Perhaps this is one reason why for many here her passing has left such a shock, generating a profound sense of loss. We are all left with an Ann shaped hole we didn’t realise we had and through which a cold winter wind now blows.
Ann and I first met at work, then Avon Medicals in Redditch, in 1980. Aspirations to be a vet had been thwarted but Ann had still turned to the life scientific, shaping a career that would see her develop as a highly capable and skilled lab technician. Initially for Avon Medicals, followed by Glaxo, then Boots the Chemist and with our 1989 return to the Midlands, by then with 1st born Emma, to two schools - North Bromsgrove and Walkwood Middle School, staying with the latter for nearly 20 years until her retirement with ill health in 2021.
But this isn’t going to be a CV or a chronology because Ann was more than a series of professional roles and titles. There are many Ann’s to be celebrated.
 
Firstly, there was the dancing Ann.
As daughter Thea in her appreciation on Facebook said, “she was always the first one on the dance floor and the last one off.”
Yes, and frequently dragging me with her.
This does provide me with the opportunity to thank her publicly for giving me the often uncluttered stage on which to show off my famed and, I like to think, highly skilled dance moves.
Honed carefully in Lufbra Student Union over 3 intense weeks in January 1980, (why change a winning formula), they remain, I’m told, a timeless relic of a bygone age.
Thankfully Ann didn’t seem to mind. She would get up and dance with anyone who showed enough appropriate enthusiasm coordinated or not.
She was the original Duracell bunny.
Before Spotify, there would be the carefully mixed and curated party dance tape, crafted to make sure we were all dancing for as long as possible; the greatest sin then was to pick the ‘floor emptying tune’.
A lasting memory will be the parties with the many friends as we created the home disco vibe, dancing way into the night.
Secondly, there was Ann the Home maker, the rock on which our stable family base was founded and on which we raised our two beautiful daughters Emma and Thea; of which Ann, indeed, we are both immensely proud.
Dave Glasbey, who as both a dear friend and our financial advisor, once said we were one of the best teams he had come across.
Actually, technically, more of a work group really, two individuals clear on what were their separate roles and responsibilities and then delivering on them, mostly.
The worst thing you could do for Ann was to not deliver on something you said you were going to do; or do something that had been agreed she was going to do, as more than one of the Vicars found out when she was their Church Warden.
Whilst Ann suffered fools, as this fool can testify, what she didn’t suffer was their foolish behaviour, as this fool can also attest.
It was the lack of thought, of care, the inability to see the consequences of an action on others.
For Ann, love was about putting the cups in the dishwasher, picking up the dirty washing, carrying the box to the car, of being thoughtful.
In an age of feminism, we kept to our roles to a rather traditional pattern. I did do the ironing once in March 1982 but was relieved of the responsibility owing to issues with Quality Assurance and productivity.
But she was much more than a home maker, she was a community builder
and her definition of ‘community’ was wide, indeed radically all encompassing.
Her world was the whole world, including all humanity, in fact creation in all its forms, animal, vegetable and mineral. This was to be demonstrated through small, in the moment, thoughtful acts, delivered one at a time.
To illustrate, I will quote again, directly from the lovely words which Thea posted on Facebook:
In the last few weeks, I’ve found myself reflecting on the kind of person Mum was.
She was determined to make a positive difference in the world, in whatever way she could. She got a medal for the number of times she gave blood.
She recycled things before it was cool and you had a bin in your house for it.
She was one of the UK’s top sellers of Fair-Trade produce.
She once told me off in Sainsburys for picking up a brand of French bread because she didn’t agree with their nuclear weapons testing.
Actually, it wasn’t just French bread - French apples, French Brie indeed anything French were the subject of a conscious boycott. She didn’t hate the French, but it was their actions and behaviour she railed against – there’s a profound difference.
Thea again: The woman was a force to be reckoned with, but also full of kindness and love.
There was her work in Africa for Mission Morogoro (as both trustee and volunteer).
That saw her, with others, climb Mount Kilimanjaro in 2013 to raise money and she made several visits to that part of Tanzania.
At home she was an ardent supporter of many causes such as the soil association, amnesty international, a committed environmentalist, a vegetarian for 35 years in protest over the ways animals were being treated to make food for us. She deliberately chose the charity Freedom from Torture for donations today “because no one’s heard of it, and they are doing important work”. Campaigning to the end.
She was Church Warden in Feckenham for nearly 20 years, and an active member of the PCC for longer.
A founding member of the Feckenham village shop, she gave 10 years of unpaid service in its day to day running.
Then there was Lunch Club, The Village Hall and the WI.
It’s quite a list, and I make no apologies for reading them out, acknowledging and recognising them.
You see, it’s actions not words.
Fitting then Ann, that you passed in Advent as Christmas is the Christian feast of incarnation. For Ann, God wasn’t some Sunday school beardy bloke in the sky, it was about the love expressed in the now, in the moment.
God as verb, not as a noun, God is in the relationship, it’s in love.
A theologian would say it’s a world view that sees God as an incarnational part of all of us, that we see and relate to; the God like part of me recognising and loving the God like part of you, unconditionally.
And to that profound theological insight I can hear Ann sighing wearily,
‘Yeah whatever, now if you can put that Traidcraft box in the boot, take those things to the foodbank and put those bloody cups in the dishwasher’.
She kept it real; she kept it grounded, she kept it in the moment,
Indeed, you kept me real, kept me grounded, kept me in the moment.
And what did I give you?
Well, apart from athlete’s foot, perhaps an appreciation of ‘moany music’. Thank you for tolerating The Jam, The Fall and Joy Division, although you did say you liked The Style Council and The Smiths.
Perhaps, an education in brummie idioms –  puthery, mardy, ‘all round the Wrekin’ and tarrabit.
And you gave me a profound appreciation of what it means to be human, of the act of forgiveness, of what it means to be radically inclusive, and of course two beautiful daughters.
So tarrabit.
Leave the light on love, I’ll be up soon.
Yes, let’s leave the light on love. Amen