Twenty-five years ago, I placed an advert in the lonely-hearts section of the local free newspaper. Three ladies responded and I arranged dates with two of them. I had a pleasant evening with the first on the Saturday of the August bank holiday, and on the Sunday, I had arranged to have Sunday lunch with Gloria. We arranged a rendezvous in the Homebase car park and Gloria was very trusting in getting into my shiny new Peugeot and I drove to the Cricketers Pub in Danbury. We had a very nice lunch, and we hit it off really well, so much so that Gloria invited me back to her house and our date actually lasted for twelve hours. I left her house at around midnight. The following morning, Bank Holiday Monday, my telephone rang at 7:00 and I wondered who would phone me at that time. it was Gloria and she wanted to see me again, so I went to her house that day. We have been together ever since, and Gloria moved in with me after about six months.

We knew quite early on that we would like to get married but there was a slight complication that Gloria’s divorce hadn’t come through. One of the people in my office in London suggested that we should get married in Jersey because Gloria did not want to get married locally in Southend. At the end of September 2001, we had booked a flight to Jersey and on the morning that we were going Gloria received her decree absolute through the post which we took with us.

We had intended to look for a suitable place to get married in Jersey and when we went into the main registry office in Saint Helier that seemed the perfect setting. The Assistant Registrar emerged from his office to talk to us. He produced his book to write us in. We were offered a date in a couple of weeks. We explained that that was a little quick and the date we fixed on was actually three weeks away on a Friday, because apparently only Jersey residents are allowed to be married on Saturdays in the register office.

So about three weeks later we went back to Jersey, were resident for the required period of four days prior to getting married. Our wedding day was wonderful, with a dozen of us there. My sister and her husband made it, along with one of my cousins, and some dear friends and also two colleagues from my firm’s Jersey office. We had a very pleasant lunch at a hotel on Gorey Pier where we were staying and we were very fortunate with the weather which was bright sunny and warm for the whole duration of our stay.

We have been back to Jersey many times because we have such lovely memories of the island. We have been very lucky that we found each other, and we have had such a happy time, indeed many happy times since then.

We have been fortunate to also visit Florida a number of times and have also been to South Africa and St. Lucia.

Some of our friends and relations probably thought we were taking a risk by getting married after only having met each other a year earlier but we made the right decision between us and I’m very thankful that that we have had twenty-five years together.