| John and I have always thought our meeting and eventual marriage was akin to a fairy story. It all started in 1957 when we met at RAF Tangmere for Battle of Britain Day commemoration. That summer I had come over to England as part of a European tour, and decided to stay with my sister Margaret, and RAF husband Tony, a school friend of John’s, who had met and married in Canada in 1956. John was home on leave from Malta. We spent a week together riding around Sussex on his Norton motorcycle. When we said goodbye John said maybe we shall meet again in Canada, or if you come back to England.At Christmas he returned home to Enfield, and Margaret, Tony and I met up with Tony’s parents and John’s parents for the festive season. Little did I know that I was meeting my future in-laws.
I returned to Canada in March 1958. John and I wrote back and forth, not too often, for four and half years. In the winter of 1962 he was stationed at RAF Upavon and was later successful in gaining a place on a Flight Engineer course. I came back over to England during the summer of 1962 to visit Margaret and Tony again, and to see John in order to find out if ‘this was it’ or was it a ‘dear John letter’! |
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| Well it wasn’t!! We became engaged, and I returned to Canada to plan our wedding. With John’s father not in good health, we chose to get married in England. It was sad that my wider family wouldn’t be able to be with us, but my Mother and I had the most wonderful and memorable trip over on the old “Queen Mary”, arriving in time for our banns to be read. My father was an Anglican minister who was able to marry us in a lovely little church in Cranborne, Berkshire on Saturday May 4th 1963.The early days of our marriage saw us moving from place to place as John continued on his Flight Engineer’s course (training on Hastings). Whilst in Bath, our first child Julie was born in 1964. John was then stationed in Colerne and we were there until September 1965, when he was posted to Singapore where our son Steven was born in Changi hospital in November of that year.We returned to England in January 1967, and John was stationed at Lindholme, Yorkshire. While at Lindholme, John was accepted by BOAC as a Flight Engineer. He started on a conversion course on to VC10s in July 1968 and was checked out ‘to be let loose on the general public’ one year later. We had got on the property ladder in March of that year, but it took us nearly a year to sell the house and move south to Ampthill in Bedfordshire, where we lived for 15 years.
In 1974 British Airways was formed and during the winter of ‘74/75 John converted on to Boeing 747’s (on which he remained until his retirement in 1991). October 1983 found us taking Julie to Bath University to begin a 4 year course in Horticulture, and we decided at the same time to check out the West Country with a view of coming to live here. And so we found Charmouth!! We moved into “The Blevins” on April 6th 1984. John continued to fly on trips from here until February 1991.We have loved Charmouth and the people. At the end of this April, we were given a chance to return to Malta for a RAF reunion with our close friends whom we had been stationed with in Singapore. It certainly was a trip down memory lane for John as he returned to his old RAF station and actually saw his old Nissan hut and the camp. We have come full circle to where it started; John coming from Malta in 1957 to May 4th this year when we celebrated our Golden Wedding anniversary. “50” years together – we can hardly believe it! We have been happily married all these years, and we thank God for putting us together. Pauline and John Berridge |
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