And here, we might take our final cue and remember Oenone Venetia at home ( Oenone to some, Venetia to others) : that wonderful warm and caring mother, the inspired cook and the jolly and generous hostess. Mother to us all, but special caring Mum-Mum to Rowan, Kilda and Marney and to their spouses and children, even to her brother Rivers a motherly sister. That warm kitchen of hers where one always ate : those raised pies with her distinctive pastry, that potato salad, those lambs kidneys, custards. And her careful choice of aperitif. Who else but Venetia would be able to tell one that the dry spicy French Vermouth was first devised by a Monsieur Noilly and an English Mr Prat, and so should properly be called Noilly Prat (the t sounded) ? Then there was her savouring of wine, and precise selection of same. And as well as opinions on the wine, at her table there would ever and always be the vigorous airing of contentious issues : burning enthusiasm for anything from Bird Migration to Association Football ( that late-vocation passion that became as important as Wimbledon tennis). Venetia could wax as lyrical about a long-distance Thierry Henry strike as about a Federer parting-shoot... and by then we might be nearing the Paddy or the Black Bush stage of the evening. The savouring of the good old Cork whiskey or of the Black stuff from the North, on any occasion... that’s another story...... for another time... Suffice to say that to be out with Venetia in a pub (without Muzak, mind you !) and to be watering her Paddy for her – (“ Just a tincture,dear. No! Stop!”) - that was a treat. But, to eat with her and her family in their own kitchen in Fitzwilliam Lane or Brighton Avenue, or even in the last years when she moved beside her dear Kilda, and Ciaran and Rosamund, in Royal Terrace West – to be her guest was an experience one does not forget. In fact, there is little about Oenone Venetia Carew – O Sullivan that will be, should be forgotten by those who knew and loved her. May she now imbue and enhance this poor imperfect earth of ours with some of her great goodness.