TRAVELS WITH SALLY
(With apologies to John Steinbeck)

We first met in about 1965 when we were both part of a group of teenagers who were members of two youth clubs in Balham, Southwest London and who socialised a lot during school holidays. The Cooper house in Marius Road was a frequent venue for us all to meet as it had large rooms and Sally’s parents were always welcoming.

We got together in early 1970 while Sally was working for Bank of London and South America before she decided to start Nurse Training at University College Hospital in September that year. For those who don’t know, the often-used OUCH acronym refers to a group of 7 girls who started in Set 185 and who are still the closest of friends, along with all our families.

I would drive to and from UCH and/or St Pancras Hospital to bring her back to her home when she was not working. There was an embarrassing incident at Christmas 1971 when my car broke down and I had to be helped to take her back to work by our friend Alan Futter with his Reliant three-wheeled van!

Our first little adventure after we got married in 1972 was to drive our Frogeye Sprite to the Atlantic coast of France along with another Sprite owned by John Hillsdon, with Pauline who were to get married the following year and are here today. This is probably when we fell in love with France. We first heard the album Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd on the beach on the Ile D’Oleron and it has been our French soundtrack ever since.

I recall another trip to the same area in1978 along with some friends including John, Pauline and a couple of other OUCH’s. Sally was expecting Iain at the time. I remember going to a restaurant, in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, where the oysters were compulsory!

Our first big adventure was in April 1980 when Sally was pregnant with Johanna. I was working for an American Company, and we had the opportunity to visit their offices in Pittsburgh and Colorado Springs. We left Iain with his grandmother Mabel and extended our visit into a road trip West through Arizona and Nevada to the California coast and up to San Francisco. We were completely smitten by the Grand Canyon and the West Coast and have been on a similar trip twice more, once with Iain and Johanna.

When the children were young, we developed our relationship with France and holidayed in various regions for about 10 years. Our favourite destination was the village of La Clusaz in the Alps in the summer, where we all knew that we would meet at the Lion D’Or bar in the square once we had finished our various activities.

When Iain and Johanna had either gone to university or left home, we were able to visit Thailand, South Africa, India, Australia, Japan and the Southern USA.

In 2005 we bought a Jaguar XK8, which I still own, and in 2006 we set off on our grand adventure to purchase a house in Southwest France. While we were both working, we spent most of our holidays there and were able to welcome close friends and family. Once we had both retired in April 2010, we were in St Maigrin for about 4 months of the year. We never planned to move there permanently and were lucky to be able to have real homes in two countries.

I was always the travel manager and I had further trips up my sleeve. We were due to go to the Passion Play in Oberammagau in August this year.

We would have been married for 50 years in October this year and throughout that time we always tried to have fun! We were quite successful in this.

She put up with my lifetime obsession with Bob Dylan and my love of Paul Simon, but she would not put up with Neil Young.

Thank you to all our friends for coming today and for the generous donations which have been received. A special mention for OUCH families, King of Siam’s Own Scout Group (KSO) and friends from our school days.