This is a golden couple in every sense of the world. In the first instance, I’d say they were “pure gold” because they are, as you’ll know if you’ve been visiting my pbase for a while, my very own mummy and daddy. Yep – it’s the mix up of genes from these two, along with the environment that they provided for me as I was growing up that made me who I am today. So, I reckon that makes them pure gold.

They’re also golden because of the golden hues in this shot. That’s a lucky coincidence because it’s the photo of them cutting the cake on their golden wedding anniversary. Yep, they’ve survived 50 years together and that makes them quite unusual in a world where marriage is as disposable as a take-away supper. They married when my Mum was a tender 17 and my Dad barely out of his teens at 20. It was not a “Shotgun wedding” in any sense other than that the military were involved heavily in its timing. My Dad had given up his job in a coal mine at my Mum’s behest because he’d been trapped underground and my Mum’s father had died in similar circumstances. Had he left the coal mine without joining up in the RAF, he’d have been called up for National Service so he chose to sign up as a regular.

He did his basic training, all well and good, then came the blow/opportunity/exciting news that he was being posted to Cyprus for three years. Yikes. Mum and Dad were young and in love and the thought of three years separation was not what they wanted to hear. They made a plan. They decided to use the three years to save up for a big wedding on his return. It sounded good in theory but in practice, it meant that the young couple would still have to be apart for three years.

They decided at the last moment that they were not prepared to be apart for so long and the only way in which they could be together was to marry so my Mum would be allowed by the RAF to go to Cyprus too.

A special licence was sought and granted so on 30th May 1959 in Aylesham’s St Peter’s Church (the mining village where my Mum grew up and where she met my Dad), they married.

They had a couple of days together after the wedding and then my Dad boarded a troop ship to go to Cyprus, my Mum followed about six weeks later. In today’s world, going off to Cyprus at 17 would not be considered particularly adventurous but in the days before international travel was available for the proletariat and long, long before every spotty teenager went off to see the world on their gap year, it was a very big, brave thing to do.

My Mum put herself into a foreign country about which she knew little, where she had to stay for three years, without hesitation when it was a choice of that or be separated from Dad. Don’t forget, she was only seventeen. I reckon that’s a pretty remarkable start to married life.

Today was my Mum and Dad’s celebration of their lives together.

They chose to return to St Peter’s Church, the scene of their wedding, to remake their vows.

As you know, I’m very anti-religion so my time in church was taken up by a combination of daydreaming and picking soil out from under my fingernails, while standing and sitting at the appropriate times. There was one place in the ceremony though when I was totally captivated. The bit where they said their vows. Of course they were free from the constraints of the legally binding wedding vows so they simply said what they wanted to say.

What I can say is that my Dad (sorry Mum) was a total star. A revelation. He spoke without any notes and it was straight from the heart. He faltered and stumbled a little bit along the way with the intense emotion of the occasion and what he was saying. He held my Mum’s hand throughout while he described a love that had hit him on the first day he met her that had never dulled or weakened in the 50 years that followed. He applauded my Mum for being her, giving him us and subsequently his sons-in-law and his grandchildren. He promised to love her until the day he dies and beyond. His quiet voice was choked with emotion and once or twice he had to pause to recompose himself before continuing but that only added to the intensity of what he said.

There was not a dry eye in the place. I looked around to see their guests with tears on their cheeks, hankies stuffed to their eyes to stem the flow of tears. He was magnificent.

My Mum’s reply was simple, direct and equally from the heart but you could see her nervousness while she read from a script she’d prepared earlier.

They followed their church service with food and drinks in the old school (now a training centre). I saw people I’ve not seen for many years. My great-aunt didn’t recognise me and said that the last time she’d seen me was when I turned up on her doorstep as a punk! I don’t have any recollection of that but I wasn’t sorry that was her memory of me.

Mum and Dad had a great day I think (and hope). Many, many congratulations to my pure gold parents on such a big day.