Meld that little lot together and it's understandable why any appropriate adjective remains elusive.
She's no help, it doesn't occur to her she's "one of a kind", someone so down to earth she's not adverse to dispensing a rat with a spade.
How earthy can one get?
Who but Fenella would willingly write publicly about her "old bat" of a mother-in-law walking in unannounced on her only child making love to his new bride? It's a story she's happy to repeat here. Fenella married into the Playne family at 20, her husband, Nat (full name Fitzarthur Charles Nathaniel Playne), 18 years her senior.
"He had a moustache, looked like Clark Gable and drove a Humber Super Snipe."
He asked her to "the pictures" the day they met, "then had to go to the club [Rotorua Gentleman's Club] for Dutch courage".
Within months they'd married. His mother joined them for part of their honeymoon.
"She turned our marriage into a threesome-we'd all go out together, me in the back seat."
City girl Fenella and Nat moved into the cottage beside the Playnes' far more imposing home. How the Playnes came to own the property is a fascinating peek into the district's history. With close links to Britain's aristocratic Beaufort family, Nat's father,a member of the Royal Geographical Society, arrived in New Zealand in the early 1900s to compile an
encyclopaedia. After marrying a New Zealander (the dreaded "old bat"), his next stop was India, Nat was born there.
In 1937, the Playnes returned, flew over 5000 barren Okareka acres (2023 hectares), buying it for a pound ($2) an acre. Nat was left to break it in. When his father died, he was buried on the property the Playnes named Longfords. Nat's interred there too "on a rise above the parsnips, we put Nat down 10 feet so I can go on top," Fenella the realist imparts.
She takes us back to her life as a young bride living in virtual isolation.
"We only went into town on Thursdays; I didn't have my own car until I was 35."
Within a month of marriage she was pregnant, her second child born 18 months after the first. "Mrs Playne said we were breeding like rabbits . . . it took me five years to call her Mama."
It didn't bode well for a warm relationship knowing "Mama" kept pictures, on her mantelpiece, of three girls she considered more suitable marriage material for her son.
"I wasn't from the landed gentry, my father was a bank manager, worse, I was a Roman Catholic."
Fenella still smarts over her mother in- law's reaction to her Grace Kelly-like wedding gown.
She sniffed and said 'the zip's down the wrong side'."
There's a flash of her wicked humour when she assures us she also wore a long veil . . . "well, I was a virgin, after all". Other "Mama" insults followed over the years. After the arrival of her third child, Fenella began to connect with the community she's become a cornerstone of.
"I realised I needed to get involved, the Okareka Hall had just been built, a lot of Playne hoggets helped fund it, I started a Sunday school there."
Spinning followed.
"I loved it, Dorothy Pickernell taught me to spin among the coal range, babies, nappies."
She joined the Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB).
"I loved that too, I think everyone should be taught listening skills, how to manage money constructively."
Through the CAB, she heard a search was on for marriage guidance counsellors. "I didn't think I'd be accepted, I was interviewed by a doctor only interested in my sex life because my husband was so much older; a social worker said my voice was too posh, I said 'I sound exactly the same driving the Land Rover in a Swannie and the stock don't mind'."
She was accepted.
Fenella was to the forefront 15 years ago, when St Luke's church established its Growing Through Grief programme for youngsters dealing with death or divorce.
"People don't realise separation has a greater grieving process than death."
Operating on the "look good, feel good" principle, Fenella and friend Helen Rodwell became make-up artists for Queen Elizabeth Hospital patients "so they'd forget their aches and pains-feel better about themselves".
The dictum "helping people's like reframing a picture" drives her. "It's not about telling anyone what to do but constructively helping them help themselves."
Anyone have an appropriate adjective yet?
Fact box
? Fenella Playne (nee Clayton)
? Born: Palmerston North, 1935.
? Education: St Joseph's Convent
School from 6-17, Karitane Hospital
training.
? Family: One son, two daughters,
three grandsons, three
granddaughters.
? Interests: Family "they're what
I'm proudest of"; people, flowers,
garden, church (now an Anglican
attending St Luke's), assisting
charities.
? Reflecting on her life: "It's been
fascinating."
? Personal philosophy: "Learn to
love yourself then you can learn to
love other people."
