I had something in common with Heather which is that from a really young age I was obsessed with horses.
Bill Dodd introduced me to Heather. I think he had spotted on my website that I had worked in an arts organisation for several years and hoped I had experience of working with those with of an artistic temperament. Heather needed a bookkeeper. In my 7 years at a contemporary art gallery in Exeter I had indeed experienced some artistic temper – and some horrible art. I left my initial meeting with Bill and went straight home to Google ‘Heather Jansch’. My delight on opening her website and discovering horses and art I actually appreciated was so enormous I had to phone my Mum. So began a working relationship that turned into something much more valuable.
Everyone here will have stories of Heather. I wanted to share one with you which for me encapsulates everything it meant to be around her in just one day.
On a sunny Sunday, I was at home when my mobile rang. Heather! ‘Hello darling girl’, she said ‘Would you like to come donkey shopping?’ Who could resist an invitation like that?
She picked me up in her new Landrover and we headed off across the moors, to meet some people in the car park at Whiddon Down service station. Heather had apparently met them for the first time 2 days previously, they were gypsies from Somerset, and they knew a man who had a donkey for sale. It all sounded highly dubious to me, but there they were waiting at the services with a horse box for transporting donkey.
They led the way for what seemed like miles down winding country lanes until we finally arrived at a cottage that looked like 16th century pastoral painting. There was a cobbled courtyard with a muck heap covered in chickens and turkeys, a cottage garden with a small pen containing puppies of some kind and stables with horses and the donkey looking out. Inside the house were more dogs, a parrot, a mule linnet singing in a cage and a tall elderly gentleman who served us tea in bone china teacups and cake and told us he was the man Jeremy Thorpe had tried to kill. I felt like I’d been transported into an episode of Midsummer Murders.
Eventually he took us outside to meet the donkey and her foal. He spent a long time walking them up and down while Heather observed and ran her hands down their legs and looked at their teeth and observed some more and then eventually, standing back, she said ‘No, I don’t think this is the one for me, I don’t like the shape of her head’. I was mortified, these people had given up their Sunday and towed a horsebox down from Somerset! I wondered if there might be another murder.
But such is Heather’s charm that Mr Gypsy merely said ‘Right then, let’s got to the pub’. So, we did. He bought us a slap up Sunday lunch and Heather and I drove back across the moors, Thelma and Louise style in the sunshine. It was a magic day out. I should say at this point that Heather wanted the donkey to ride down to the clifftop house she had recently bought, which everyone said was about to fall into the sea.
And that was Heather. Adventurous, impetuous, self-obsessed, rude, funny, fierce and in the end the bravest person I have ever met. Also, I am certain the only friend I will ever have who will invite me to shop for a donkey.