Platinum wedding couple look back on long and interesting life
AN elderly couple who spent years living in a warzone and dodging hand grenades have celebrated 70 years of marriage.
Barbara Hamilton, 95, and husband Jimmy, 96, attribute the longevity of their marriage to “tolerance” and never going to sleep on a row.
They first met in 1940, but did not get involved romantically until six years later, when he returned from serving in India.
And although they have spent most of their lives in Scotland, the Hamiltons spent 14 years in the Middle East during a turbulent era when the Colony of Aden became South Arabia – now known as Yemen.
Mrs Hamilton said: “We have really had a very happy life, and an interesting life too, in as much as we’ve done things that an awful lot of people would never imagine would happen in their life.”
Having met his shorthand student wife-to-be at night school, Mr Hamilton, who was training to be a plumber, invited her to a dance hosted by the Scouts. Mr Hamilton said: “I fell in love with Barbara from the minute I met her, and I never stopped.”
They wed on November 6, 1948 and after honeymoon in Inverness, moved to London. They lived in the Middle East for 14 years from 1953. Mrs Hamilton said: “We knew quite a few people who were killed... It was a warzone more or less, from the time of our second leave.”
They celebrated their platinum wedding anniversary with a party at the retirement home where they live in Hamilton, South Lanarkshire.