Matchmaker Paula cured my broken heart
MY WIFE PAULA
MY WONDERFUL wife of 50 years was christened Pauline, but from an early age she preferred Paula because ‘ Pauline’ was always the naughty girl in her childhood comics.
And there was nothing badly behaved about Paula — she was quite simply the loveliest woman from the day I met her at a party in London in the mid-Sixties.
I was a graphic designer at a firm which handled the advertising account for Bachelors Abroad, a company that was an early pioneer of singles holidays. It was where Paula worked at the time, helping to matchmake ‘lonely hearts’ who booked holidays.
Nothing made her happier than being invited to a wedding after a successful match.
She obviously had a good instinct, because some years later she told me from the moment she saw me she knew l was ‘the one’.
It took me a while longer, perhaps because I was recovering from my own broken heart after my first wife had left me for another man.
Over the next two years, Paula put me back together and we married in November 1968, the start of a wonderful new chapter.
Paul, my son from my first marriage, adored her and called her mum, and we had a son of our own, Lawrence. Paula never stopped smiling and had a wonderful sense of humour, evidenced by the nicknames she gave us all, among them Treasure Trousers, Tombstone Choppers, Snodgrass and Plume of the East.
But she was also extremely clever — she’d studied history at University College London.
In the mid-Seventies l became a cruise lecturer for Cunard, teaching art, but it wasn’t long before my wife’s talents were spotted. She was signed up to deliver lectures on medieval history, among many other subjects, to audiences of up to 800.
Our work took us all over the world on luxurious cruise liners, sometimes for months at a time. What a life!
We made so many friends, among them Maurice Gibb of the Bee Gees, and the comedians Ronnie Corbett and Bernie Winters.
Paula was lecturing until a year before she was cruelly claimed by cancer shortly before Christmas 2017.
My heart is quite broken, but it helps to think of her as I like to remember her best: on deck, at sunset, a wine glass in hand and that wonderful smile on her face.
Rest in peace my dearest darling . . . and thank you.