“As a toddler, learning to eat & drink using grown-up utensils, Beverley was not allowed beakers, or cups made of glass because she couldn’t resist the urge to bite them. A habit that caused her to bite through a glass thermometer when having her temperature taken and in the panic that ensued resulted in her Mom making her eat a cotton wool sandwich thinking it would reduce the possibility of any glass swallowed causing damage as it passed through her system on the way to the doctors.


Another odd habit was to cover her bedroom walls with posters of pop music icons, who in my opinion were absolute rubbish. However, that’s not the way Beverley saw it. She started with Cliff Richard, moved on to David Cassidy and ended with Donny Osmond. Beverley was a real fan of all of them as a youngster and I think Cliff Richard endured way beyond her youthful obsession with pop stars.


Another trait as a child was wandering off, often with her doll, Susan, in a pram and having not only the whole household, but on occasions the whole street forming search parties to find her. She was never far, well never more than a mile or so away, and usually with her friend Linda Sykes, who also had an adventurous streak. 


Beverley wasn’t keen on swimming either, or the sea, or fish, or seaweed. This was as the result of falling off an air bed whilst playing in the shallows at the seaside as a toddler and swallowing sea water and getting seaweed wrapped around her feet in her panic to get up and out of the water. I don’t know where the fish became enmeshed in her phobia, but I think she just didn’t like the look of them. Probably the big cold eyes that put her off and the thought that they must have been involved somehow in her traumatic seaside experience."