Victoria Dawber (15 Aug 1985 - 30 Mar 2023)

In loving memory of Victoria Dawber who sadly passed away on 30th March 2023.

Victoria Heather Dawber came kicking and screaming into the world on Thursday 15th August 1985 at 2.30pm, born at Rugby St. Cross Hospital. Her dad Dave said that she’d done that on purpose to stop him going to the pub! She was a very loud baby and it’s fair to say that she cried a lot! In those days with your first baby you had to stay in hospital for 4 days and on one of those days I’d popped next door to have something to eat when this matron came bustling into the room to find me, saying: Mrs Dawber – your baby’s crying again!
Vic was a voracious eater as a child and would eat almost anything – except peas which she hated with a passion. I remember being on holiday in Jersey with my mum and dad – Vic was about 4 years old – we were eating our dinner in a restaurant and unbeknown to her she was eating bright green pea and ham soup – that was though until my mum called across to her ‘Vic – do you know that’s pea soup’ at which point she spit it out all over the white tablecloth and cried until my mum gave her a biscuit!
I remember another holiday in Lanzarote when we’d taken my mum again – Vic was around 13 by then – Mum was lying by the pool reading her beloved Sun newspaper when Vic appeared eating a massive sandwich at which point my mum said ‘She’s up – She’s eating! Despite this appetite she was stick thin and one of our nicknames for her was Whippet!
Vic was dyslexic although this wasn’t picked up until she was around 11 years old. She sometimes struggled at school and I think this affected her self-confidence, although she dealt with it in her own inimitable style. One day, when she was around 5, she came home from school and told me that someone had called her thick. ‘What did you say to them’ I asked? and she’d said back: ‘I’m not thick I’m thin!’
She was a bright firework of a child and loved being in the limelight. We took her to Barbados when she was 4 and Brian and I looked around one evening to see her up on the stage singing ‘When Santa got stuck up the Chimney’, followed by winning a limbo competition in front of everyone, for which she won a t-shirt, which she then proceeded to wear every day for the rest of the holiday!

Sadly, me and Vic’s dad Dave separated when she was 1 but we shared care for her and she grew up with her wonderful Yorkshire family a constant in her life. She was lucky to have spent such wonderful times playing with her cousins at her Nanan Jean and Grandpa Derek’s house which she loved, and being there for so many family gatherings where everyone was treated to Jean’s fantastic cooking. She was so lucky to be surrounded by all of her aunties and uncles, Jane, Jill, Rob, Pete and Andy and I too had spent many many happy times there experiencing the tremendous wrap-around warmth and welcome from everyone in the family. Thank you to you all for those memories.
Tragically, her dad David died when Vic was still a teenager and this obviously affected her deeply. It’s fair to say that she went off the rails a bit and I think in her final year at school I spent more time there than she did! Despite this she gained a handful of GCSE’s which she was surprised and proud about. She decided that staying on at school wasn’t for her and left to enter the world of work.
She moved to Rugby and I would visit her every Saturday and we’d go to Leamington for a wander around the shops – she LOVED shopping! I’ve got fond memories of her meticulously handpicking single cherries out in Marks and Spencer because she insisted that if you bought the ready-packed ones at least half of them would be rotten.
While she was living in Rugby she decided that she wanted to fulfil a dream that she’d had for a while of studying law with the ultimate aim of qualifying as a barrister. With the sheer strength and determination that I always saw in her she got herself a place on an access course, followed by a law degree course in Birmingham, culminating in passing the Bar Exam and being called to the Bar in 2017, aged 32. It was one of the proudest moments of my entire life attending the ceremony in London where she was accepted into the profession that she had worked so very hard for. She wanted to specialise in criminal defence – my sister Shelley said she’d save the family a fortune!
Vic had lots of friends and I met many of them over the years – two of her best friends are here today, Zillah Carr and Sam Taylor and I’d just like to say thank you for being her friend – I know she loved you both very much. Another is Kelly Fielding who sadly can’t be here as she lives in abroad.
During many of the meet-ups we had with Vic I had the pleasure of meeting Farhaan who was also one of her best friends. I remember saying to Brian – ‘I wish Vic would settle down with Faz – it’s obvious he loves her to bits’ – and to our absolute delight she did!
Faz knows so much more about Vic’s life since she moved to Birmingham so I’m going to hand over to him to talk about those days with her.
I hope I’ve done you proud Vic – and the song coming up next is one she sent to me when I was having a tough time a few years ago. It’s Firework by Katy Perry. She said ‘listen to the words Mum, and never forget them!’ But really, it was her that was the firework – brightening up the world around her and shining like the true star that she was – a memory I shall always treasure is dancing with her to this a few weeks ago at Shelley and Graham’s wedding.
I hope you’re resting in peace my beautiful daughter because one thing’s for sure, no-one else will be!

I met Vic at the beginning of 2012 - I remember that laugh, it was the first thing I knew about her.
She was a determined girl - she had taken an access course to get herself onto her degree, not forgetting that she just decided out of the blue to become a barrister and set out on that course. When Vic knew what she wanted, there was very little that was going to stop her. Almost the only thing that could stop her was herself. She got herself onto the law course at UoB, and it was in her second year of this that she met me.

It was always her plan to take the Bar exam. Her favourite part about being a barrister wasn't any kind of high minded ideal - that came later - it was just because she liked the wig and the hat, and frankly because she liked performing! This was Vic's way of creating her own stage to stand on, and she loved the idea of strutting up and down giving people what for.
Once she graduated, she moved onto the Bar exam, and got through that in her inimitable Vic fashion, squeezing every allowance out of the exam board, extra time for her final exam, and working the dates so she didn't have to sit exams on consecutive days. As with so much Vic did when she put her mind to it, it was undeniably effective, as she sailed through with a grade of 'Highly Competent' - to her chagrin only 3 marks short of 'Outstanding'.

Once she'd done that she very quickly found work for a local solicitor's firm, and quickly got herself involved in the thick of criminal fraud cases. Crime was the side of the law that interested her, not just because she was drawn to the underhand side of things, but because she saw it as the best way to make an actual difference in the lives of real people. Vic was never in the law to get rich, otherwise she would never have specialised in criminal law - she was in it for the tangible help she could make to people's lives. Ultimately that human investment in her clients proved emotionally very tough for her. She wore her heart on her sleeve, and made her clients problems her own. For those few lucky enough to be represented by her they got a lawyer who was in many cases more invested in the case than they were themselves, who wouldn't cut any corners and would look for every angle she could to best represent her client, exactly what you’d want a lawyer to be. This meant that she saw the stories behind the dry facts, saw the human cost and the lives affected, and took on much of that burden herself.

After her 6 year period with criminal law, she decided that this cost was too much for her, and would cost her too much of her own emotional wellbeing, and decided to move into more staid (but also much better paid!) areas of the law like contracts and property law. She sadly never had the chance to make this switch fully, and reap the rewards that were surely coming her way with her immense determination and effort towards the things she really put her mind to.

While this was going on she was working to help pay the fees and her living costs. As we know Vic loved DnB, she loved jungle, and she was all about laughing and having a good time. The work she gravitated to was bar work, specifically in the night clubs of Digbeth. Vic loved everything about Digbeth - it's the grimy bit of Birmingham that won’t make the visitor’s guides, but felt real and relatable to Vic. She genuinely loved doing this work, it kept her social circle large, meant she got invited to events and backstage parties that there was no other way of knowing about, and kept her in touch with the pulse of the city. Vic always seemed to know everyone and what was going on. One of her proudest memories was blagging free tickets and backstage passes to a rap gig for her and a friend, and she repeated that story to me at every opportunity!

She was soon working as the supervisor of the club that she spent most of her time working in, and knew the staff, the bouncers, and the troublemakers. She was the ideal person to run the place efficiently, keep the new staff in line, and take absolutely no nonsense from anyone. This was definitely one of the jobs she enjoyed the most. I remember her asking me to come along to a club night at the place she was working and being refused entry by one of the bouncers. Of course I called her to say I was going home - so she promptly came out the front, argued with the bloke about this being her damn club and that I was coming in no matter what he said, even if she had to take me round to the staff entrance. Needless to say the guy let me in after being subject to Vic's wrath.

Just before the coronavirus lockdown, Vic worked her last Gay Pride event in Birmingham something she loved to do just to be there and experience the whole thing for herself. She continued staying in touch with this part of Birmingham's night life all the way through the lockdown. She always loved doing that, as she saw it, she was attending it and getting paid to do so.

Vic's effect on the world is evident in the care she took of those around her. While she loved to project a tough exterior (I'm a LEO! my name means VICTORY!) and act as though she could rise above things, in reality she took things very much to heart and was affected deeply by the actions of those around her. This also meant she cared a great deal, and the evidence of this is in the lives of those she was close to - hundreds of messages, handwritten notes, handmade gifts, expressions of care and concern by text or phone, offers of support constantly. We all have our own ways in which Vic reached out to us, and the number of ways in which she did are shown more starkly by their absence now that she is gone. The frustration for Vic was that she could not fix those she loved, only help them to help themselves. If she could have fixed everything, I know that she would.
Vic loved walking and the outdoors - her love of living things I think was related to her love of people and the spirit of life in general. She filled every flat she lived in with life, not just her own room filling personality but literally - with plants, and with animals where she could. One of her legacies to me is a huge collection of plants which have been carefully rehomed, so that her memory may live on in the new life and growth of the living things she cared for so deeply.

We went on many walks around the UK, although Vic's idea of a walk was very much not the same as mine. The first proper walk we went on was in Northumberland after visiting my Auntie Sheila. I thought nothing of it really, and described it to her as a walk. Vic took one look at the cliff face that started the route and promptly started quivering. To her very great credit though, despite her fear she got right on with it, accompanying me over the cliff and along the whole route. It was a lovely day in the sunshine, walking over fields and along cliffs, and a day i remember until now because of the fun we had, the laughs and stories we shared along the route, and the typically brutal Vic piss taking of some of the other folks along the route. That day finished with us at the local pub, exhausted, smiling, and necking 2 pints of squash each while Vic chain smoked her entire day's worth of nicotine in about 40 minutes.

Everyone who knew Vic knew of her legendary hatred of peas. There are any number of stories related to that – the pea soup when she was 4 which was fine until she realised it was made of peas, the pub we visited where she told the comically confused chef she was allergic to peas to ensure they wouldn’t end up on her plate, or the time she saw someone else at a restaurant eating peas and it was enough to put her off her own meal.
This next pea story is one that in retrospect tells me how much she was willing to put up with to be with me. I'd made her a str fry I think or some sort of ramen for her which she loved. This time I had put some sugar snap peas in which Vic enjoyed because she couldn't actually see the peas. Unfortunately I overcooked the sugar snaps, which meant the peas came out of their sugar snap pods. At the time I didn't give it much thought but years later she told me that she hated every mouthful of that with the peas floating in it, and the only reason she ate it was because she knew how much effort I had made and she didn’t want to disappoint me. Which was very Vic - where she could, once she trusted, she would put your needs above hers at every opportunity.

Vic was a huge history geek, she loved history on both the grand scale and the small. But there was, as with so much Vic, always a human connection. One of her most treasured objects was a silver cigarette holder she bought in a charity shop years ago, made in 1893. That thing had had multiple owners, what looked like a bullet dent in it, had clearly been to at least one world war and served it's various owners faithfully, just as it did Vic. She loved the history of the object, and always said it was one of her most precious possessions. Although being Vic, that didn't stop her leaving it in a bar across town at 3 in the morning one night, realising it was missing when she got home, and leading me on a wild goose chase across town to find the bloody thing. As it turned out, we gave up in the end and Vic was terribly upset, then as we approached home there was a glint on the pavement outside my door and there it was. She never lost it despite her best efforts.

Vic love the seaside, and British seaside resort towns in particular. We travelled to Weston several times, and just had a lovely time going out of an evening, waking up late, wandering into town to get a late breakfast, and indulging Vic's love of the coin push machines at the arcades. Always the 2p coin machines because 'we not bloody millionaires are we!'. I have some lovely memories of laughing with her for hours, swapping prizes and tactically taking down the machines there, in a way that's massively immature for a pair of 30 somethings but was absolutely adorable and so much fun. She introduced me to freshly made doughnuts (rat droppings a free addition), barbecue pork ribs (restaurant hygiene rating 0) and to the joys of a crispy salmon and chicken skin.

How do I remember Vic? A person of contradictions. Stubborn yet sensitive. Hardened yet caring. She was a product of her experiences and they were all visible if you knew what she had been through. She was someone who could lose confidence and needed to be built back up on occasion, and also capable of immense determination, personal growth and self reflection. Her laugh, her huge personality, her loudness and vigour and the life force she carried with her everywhere are the headline items, but her care for others, her ability to reflect on her past and become a better person because of it, and her need to be affirmed and loved by those closest to her, and to have the chance to love them back, are the things she hid from the world, but were vital parts of the complex and wonderful person that she was. Everyone who knew Vic knew she was no angel, and she knew that as well as anyone, but she was a beautiful flower that grew to express herself truly in many ways, and also had the thorns that would leave you bloody if you approached her incorrectly or tried to hold onto her too tight. Many people tried to tell Vic what to do over the years, to my knowledge not a single one of them succeeded, and Vic did exactly what she wanted to.

I consider the last 12 years I have known Vic, 6 of which were spent as her partner, to be the greatest privilege of my life. I would give anything to have her back. Despite my sadness at her loss, knowing what has happened, I would do it all over again in a heartbeat. She taught me more about myself than I even knew there was to know. You have left your mark indelibly babe, in so many ways. Every step of the rest of my life, I will carry you with me. You are Victoria Badass Dawber and I love you with all of the love.