Twenty - Twenty

The dreadful anniversary is coming around again. It is now 20 years since we lost Tanya. No need to tell again of the sinking of my consciousness at that time. When you get to middle age an unexpected tragic death becomes an almost certain passage. Death is very much part of life. 

Still, not a day goes past without my thinking about Tanya. Besides the grief is thinking what could have been. Her work, her being, had inspired many young people and she would doubtlessly would have inspired many more. We can only live up to her example. 

These photos come from a sad time. We had lost our father so we went on holiday to Kenmare, Ireland, to recover and stayed in the home of a very kind acquaintance. Tanya and I formed a pact, we'd look out for each other if anything else happened. Though a sad association, I've loved Ireland ever since. Its gentle landscape and caring people was healing. I was allowed to row myself all over Kenmare Bay. We grew up there.  

Tanya knew the darkness that can come into life but she embraced the light of living and shone with it. The impact of her life is still rippling ashore.

Nat Bocking

Tanya would be sixty today

 

If Tanya was as lucky as me with genes then I reckon no one could guess her age now.  She might be stouter and stiffer but her hair could still be its full autumn colour and her fair skin still as freckled as her youth.  

However she is only here in our memories. The photos have begun to fade as have details of events but some things remain as bright and vibrant as ever; the goodness of Tanya, her passion, her love, her energy and all that we had in our hearts of her still exists undimmed by our own decline.

I doubt Tanya had much truck with patriotism and the ceremonies of remembrance of sacrifice but she died in the service of others and so deserves to be remembered with honours.

Tanya wouldn't let recent events overshadow her birthday party and many would have been glad for the opportunity to come celebrate a real queen of hearts in a bright respite from the manufactured gloom.  Just like Tanya it would have been fun, fulfilling,  even perhaps just a bit transgressive, to celebrate by reason and not tradition. So today in Tanya’s name please raise a toast to our queer old dean. 

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old: 

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound, 

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night.

Happy Birthday Tanya. 

Here's some more photos of you being bold and beautiful. 

Thirteeneth Tribute

This year I have been thinking a lot about Shakespeare, as it was the 400th anniversary of his death.

Yesterday was the thirteenth anniversary of the death of  our darling Tanya, that bright spirit who didn't stay nearly long enough amongst us.

So I am offering, in memorium, sonnet number 29.

We do not know to whom they were written, but this one could be to anyone that  was loved  deeply, as we loved her.

"When in disgrage with fortune and men's eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least;
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
Haply I think on thee,-and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."
You came into my life as a wonderful gift, and a teacher, and not a day passes that I don't think of you.

Your mum Diana

Tanya Bocking Memorial Fund Closing Accounts

After operating the Tanya Bocking Memorial Fund for ten years, the administrators have decided it is now a fitting time to close the fund and will use the balance of the fund to support its host Adventure Unlimited. 

There were a variety of reasons for this; a principal one being that Tanya believed in keeping things simple and with the members of Adventure Unlimited who knew Tanya moving on elsewhere, the fund's administration was becoming complicated and while AU faced financial challenges it was fitting to make use the funds to support the organisation Tanya loved and had benefited. 

In these days when many billion-pound charities spend less than 50% of their income on charitable causes, the administrators are proud to have met the challenge Tanya would have set them to ensure that donors' money wasn't wasted. As and when recipients report what they have done with their grants their stories will be published here (but for many good reasons some may not want to publicise their receipt of a grant).

INCOMES
Anonymous	£4,117.00
Abseil	£5,708.00
Brent Alpha Fund	£250.00
Gemini Foundation	£5,000.00
regular donor	£1,040.00
regular donor	£1,288.00
regular donors	£107.00
collection 2007	£151.00
donor 2004	£30.00
donor 2005	£250.00
donor 2006	£120.00
donor 2006	£140.00
donor 2010 & 2011	£650.00
donor 2011	£500.00
donor 2013	£100.00
gift aid	£1,994.00
total income	£21,445.00
GRANTS MADE
grants 2015	£785.00
grants 2014	£2,424.00
grants 2013	£2,566.00
grants 2012	£3,125.00
grants 2011	£1,250.00
grants 2010	£300.00
grants 2009	£393.00
grants 2008	£3,224.00
grants 2007	£908.00
grants 2006	£1,504.00
pledged 2016	£525.00
EXPENSES
admin	£502.00
printing	£199.00
abseil site	£190.00
RESIDUAL
residue to AU	£3,550.00
total expenditure	£21,445.00

Noël Brown remembers

I used to teach guitar at Elliott School and remember Tanya as a bright individual who actually wanted to learn, unlike others who came to me so they could get out of a lesson they didn't want to do.

Like Tanya’s friend Louisa, another pupil, I recently searched Google to see how people I used to know got on in the intervening years. It came as a big shock to learn about Tanya’s passing.

I have good reason for remembering Tanya as, at the beginning of one lesson, we both discovered that we were fans of MAD magazine. I mentioned that I particularly liked the work of Don Martin who drew silly action cartoons for them. Without further prompting Tanya handed me an A4 sheet of Don Martin sound effect cartoons, printed as stamps and gave them to me. I was extremely grateful for this gesture as I hadn't known of their existence.

Having read of Tanya after leaving school I am impressed. In the short time I knew her I recognised her confidence and thought she would go on to better things after school. I expect I'm somewhere in a long line of people who were lucky enough to know her and her generous gesture regarding the cartoons will be with me always. I am still a musician, the cartoons are still funny and I still think of Tanya’s unprompted generosity.

Dr. Noël Brown
SW17 7HH

In the event that anyone wants to contact Noël about Tanya please get in touch with Tanya's brother Nat.

Lesley Thomson

Tanya figured significantly in the life of novelist Lesley Thomson or is it the other way around? They both grew up in the same road and I recall Tanya credited Lesley's mother May (a former headteacher) as a tutor and mentor during her 'O' levels. Lesley was a bit older - nothing now in relative terms - but in pre-teenage years someone four years older was practically grown-up and Lesley was looked up to as someone both fun and clever and wise.

Lesley's latest novel The Detective's Secret mentions Tanya in the author's acknowledgements and the settings in the story in Chiswick and Hammersmith are all places very familiar to both Lesley and Tanya.

Time for T

I can't think of a photo which better encapsulates Tanya in her element.

A Tribute to Tanya

The courage that my mother had, went with her and is with her still

Rock from New England quarried, now granite on a granite hill.

The golden brooch my mother wore she left behind for me to wear.

There is no thing I treasure more, yet it is something I could spare.

O if instead she'd left to me that thing she took into the grave,

That courage, like a rock, which she has no more need of, and I have. 

                                              

                                                                     Edna St. Vincent Millay

This poem is in memory of my beloved daughter, Tanya Bocking who died 11 years ago on December 10th.

It was written to a mother, but it could easily be to a daughter. Tanya had great courage . It defined

 her life, and was at the core of her being. Courage, love for her friends and family, and a deep sense

 of. justice. The world cannot easily spare such people.

That day, 11 years ago, was the nadir of my life  Having known her and loved her, we had to get used

 to life without her. She was  a great teacher, and a huge influence. I was privileged to have brought

 into the world such a woman.

So give a thought for her today, a person so  brave and fine that her example lasts after she has gone.

Diana Morris

Commercial

By circumstances unknown, perhaps somebody knew somebody, but in 1975 if I recall, Tanya was cast as a Russian princess in a cinema cigarette commercial. I vaguely remember it was only going to be shown in New Zealand and that was shot at the Directors' Institute in a lush panelled clubroom. Tanya's role consisted of being one of a royal family in a framed photo on a desk of the set filmed in close-up; a common exposition device. There was a film camera doing a complicated dolly-shot and a still photographer using a 10 x 8 plate camera to get the 'billboard' version.  I remember the 'prince' in the photo was very sweet and quite gay and the Grand Dame wasn't at all posh and sat patiently between takes doing her knitting.