I have had many wonderful times with the Lloyds as a childhood school friend of Claire's. 

Once Claire and I were in the car with Norma and Alison driving over Otley Chevin, when the car started to chug and splutter. 'We might have run out of petrol!' Norma told us. A plan came together that we would jump out and push so she could turn round and free-wheel, petrol- less back down the hill into Otley. She disappeared in to the distance, picking up quite a pace. Some time later the car reappeared. 'Jump in, we have to go back for the Americans!' Who?, What? All of them? And where are they?' 

We learned that Norma had swept into the garage at the bottom of the hill, got her petrol and regaled the attendant with her story... 2 girls had been in the shop, maybe smiled at her tale. Anyway when she got back in the car and went to leave, they sort of gestured at the car and Norma knew instantly that they were hitch hikers. She stopped the car, wound the window down, offered them a bed for the night, then drove away, telling them she'd be back for them, but had abandoned her children on the moors and needed to get them ASAP! 

Anyway they must have thought her not too mad, because they were there when we went back and had free board and lodgings for the night! 

So many memories. The time she decided to pull up a little too close to the garage doors in her new automatic car, while half in, half out of her seat... That was the end of the doors! Of driving around Roundhay Park on bonfire night to watch fireworks without feeling the cold, meals at Salvo's in Headingley and buying a blue treasure chest at Piece Hall.  She made everything sparkle and full of fun. I always felt welcome to join the adventures... I could have been on the phone over 5 minutes before she passed me to Claire some nights when I rang. When I saw her for the first time after over 15 years, she had not changed, still able to tell a story like nobody else. So funny and engaging and fabulously outrageous.