60 years on, she’s still a little cracker
Diamond date: Mary and Archie Penfold. Photo: SG140313-132TW www.spaldingtoday.co.uk/buyaphoto
A couple whose love affair has lasted a lifetime celebrated their 60 years of marriage last week the way it all started - down the pub.
Mary and Archie Penfold got together with friends and neighbours from Sutton St James at the Hat and Feathers in the village for their diamond wedding party last week.
Archie (83) remembers as though it were yesterday the pretty 15-year-old who came into the pub where he was socialising with friends, and shyly asked them if they’d seen her mum.
It was the eve of her 16th birthday and he saw her home that night, and gave her £1 as a birthday gift.
He said: “We met the next day for our first date and she was standing there, holding a white handbag which she’d bought with the pound I gave her.
“I thought Christmas had come early - she was alittle cracker. I didn’t realise until we married how talented she was and a really good cook.
“I’m very lucky. We’re still in love all these years on.”
Archie and Mary moved to the Fens from their home county of Essex in the late 1980s after he was made redundant from his job in a power station. He’d previously worked for the council as a groundsman.
The couple’s children John, Linda and Mary, who live in Rugby, Devon and Essex respectively, all came for a family party at the weekend.
Archie, as the oldest of 10, has a vast family back in Essex and says he couldn’t have found a hall big enough to accommodate them, so he and Mary will visit them instead.
There are three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.
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Weather for Spalding
Thursday 23 May 2013
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Light showers
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