Mrs Margaret Joan Fontebasso
1931 - 2019
Margaret, my wife, died on the 20th of January 2019, after an illness she never took seriously but that in the end caused her an agonising ending: she was one month short of her 88th birthday and we had been married for nearly 58 years.
Born Margaret Joan Yetman in Crawley, when it was a village, as she used to remind me, she lived there until April 1960 when she changed from an accounting job to a more varied secretarial one at the Royal Hotel in Bognor Regis: that is where I met her.
She was a very reserved person, but warm and understanding once I knew her. Our first real meeting was in Chichester having a cream tea in the Tea Room where she preferred to go. From then on, we always had time for a cream tea. We found that we liked the same kind of music and history; we had serious discussions about morals in politics and religion.
One thing we did not agree on was FOOD: she used to say that food is to live while I was living for food. I believe she never really understood that as a chef, I too needed food to live but how could I pay my bills without ….Food! We married in April 1961.
In 1971 we moved to Cranleigh and both worked at Cranleigh School, I was the Catering Manager, she was the Book Shop Manageress. Eventually we purchased the house in Charts Close and that was her last move. She died after two operations to clear an intestinal blockage and her funeral was on the 12th of February at St Nicolas Church, where some 200 people paid their respect to a “true lovely lady” as she was described in the over 150 cards that her sister, Dorothy, and I received.
Giovanni Fontebasso