My mother-in-law, Euphemia "Phemie" Shotton, who has died aged 89, led a life of small, private kindnesses. She had a gift for maintaining friendships over decades with all kinds of people. In her village, Grundisburgh, Suffolk, her warm welcome and her cooking were legendary, and she used her baking as a way of connecting with others. She never visited without bringing a delicious, freshly baked, foil-wrapped loaf or cake (or both). She baked the fish-delivery lady's wedding cake, and left a slice of tea bread for the milkman every week with his payment.
The eldest of three sisters brought up in Stockport as Scottish Presbyterians and Manchester Guardian readers, Phemie trained during the war as a nursery teacher. The deprivation she saw in Wythenshawe persuaded her to train as a children's social worker, with posts in Middlesex and York. After her father died, she returned to the north-west to live and work in Wilmslow, near her mother.
Phemie met Douglas, a telecommunications research scientist, on a walking holiday in the Swiss Alps in 1958. She gave up her work when they married in 1959, and they settled together in Richmond, south-west London. She and Douglas lived a quiet, domestic life, taking pleasure in raising their twin sons, Nick and Tim, and in walking holidays in Europe.
She underwent intrusive surgery for oral cancer in the late 1960s, and spent three years recovering. Surviving this ordeal gave her a renewed commitment to spending her life well. When the family moved to Suffolk in 1973 she took an active part in the church and village life.
Phemie helped wherever she could. She supported her sister Marian through her years of MS, taking her on holidays and jaunts. She looked after Douglas as he declined into dementia. She wrote weekly letters to her sisters and her sons. She was a loving granny, especially gentle with her severely learning-disabled granddaughter. I never heard her speak a word in anger.
In 2012, eight years after Douglas died, she moved to be near her son's family in Bromley, Kent. She worked weekly in the Widmore Road lunch club for homeless people.
Phemie is survived by Nick and Tim, and by her sister Rachel.
