No.74

Jean and I were married 64 years ago today in Sandyford-Henderson Memorial Church in Glasgow. She died on 31st January 2016.

It was when I started working at the church community centre in Glasgow that I met Jean. She was a member of that church, was leader of the Brownies and a frequent visitor to the centre.

Our friendship gradually developed and in the summer of 1953 we went on holiday together to Portsoy. Although we were guests in the local hotel and had our meals there, we were boarded out in a house a short distance away, Jean having a room upstairs while I was downstairs.

There was a piano in the hotel, and we always remembered that one of the guests, in her Aberdeenshire accent, would ask me to give them a “tunie.”

We became engaged in August of that year. 

Jean and her father

Arriving at the church

1954 was the year in which -

Roger Bannister ran the 4 minute mile
The Vietnam War began
There was a hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the Pacific
Senator Joseph McCarthy began his anti-Communist hearings in America
The Nobel Prize for Literature went to Ernest Hemingway

Films popular that year included -

The Belles of St. Trinian’s
Brigadoon
The Dam Busters
Doctor in the House
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
White Christmas

On radio there was Hancock’s Half-Hour, the Goon Show and the Billy Cotton Band Show.
On TV the first soap to be screened in the UK was the Grove Family, and 1954 was the year which saw the controversial play 1984.

At the back - my father, Jean's father and my cousin John.

With Mary the Matron of Honour is the flower girl Jane a niece of Jean's.

On the left is Jean's mother and on the right my mother.

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Our wedding, which used the Church of Scotland form of marriage, was conducted by my uncle Rev George Hardie who was a Baptist. At that time he was the Secretary of the Baptist Union in Scotland.

The matron of honour was Jean’s friend Mary, the best man was my cousin John, Rita my sister played the organ and Jean’s brother-in-law Angus was church officer.

My parents

With my parents, my sister Rita and her fiancé Richmond.

They were married later that summer.

After the reception, we went to Central Station where we joined the overnight sleeper to London Euston. From Paddington Station we took the train to Newton Abbot, north Devon, and there we spent the first part of our honeymoon.

Among places we visited were Torquay, Paignton, Buckfast Abbey and we had a sail on the River Dart.

In one of the hotels in Newton Abbot we were befriended by 3 or 4 older men who entertained us with their songs. This was long before Karaoke!

When our time there was over, we returned to London for a week of sight-seeing. We stayed with the parents of Leonard Lewis, my friend from our time in the RAF. Some years earlier my own parents had acted as hosts to Mr and Mrs Lewis when they visited Scotland.

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