The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
JUNE 2, 1962 was a warm summer day at the Coton Parish Church in Nuneaton, Warwickshire. It was there and then that John and Marlene Phipps were married, and 60 years on they will celebrate the occasion in Ballinruan, which has been their home since 1995. The couple first met on a quiet Sunday in 1959, when Marlene was just about to turn 16. Not much older himself, John was already working on the railways, and was whiling the afternoon away at a social club for its employees. “On a Sunday there’d be a bit of a dance in one room and there were three rooms there. Marl’s friend, her father was a guard on the railway. They were fed up on a Sunday afternoon and her friend said I know where we’ll go.” Marlene says Sundays were for church and little else and her father wouldn’t have been a bit impressed if he’d known where she was off to. …
Read More »