7 JUNE 2008, Page 44

Miss Marella Mink

She walks down the stairs descending into my eye with dark, crisp hair, freshly curled, her namesake’s fur around her neck.

She is mischievous in her goodness and knows how to laugh into mellowness; her clear voice is a mockery in its Irish brogue and sometimes she wears lipstick in the pulpit!

And this character from another age knows how to talk to angels, and how to win children’s hearts she is the last tradition of a moonlight night staring over pine and through candle light over a glass of fragrant rich red wine.

She is a complicated war horse and knows how to sing a beautiful song after prayers, on Sundays, in St Mary’s!

Peter Isacké