Waterlooville couple celebrate platinum anniversary

The News, Portsmouth

Peter and Olive Akehurst celebrate their anniversary with a surprise party

Transcript

00:00 [Sounds of people talking]

00:18 Could you introduce yourself?

00:20 My name's Peter, Peter Acres, and this is my wife Margaret.

00:24 But she's nicknamed Olive because of the too many of them in the class.

00:29 Oh really?

00:30 So as there were three of them, two of them had to be called by their second name.

00:37 Oh I see.

00:38 So everybody calls her Olive.

00:40 So tell us a bit more about what's happening today.

00:43 Well, we're about a week over the top obviously because we decided to have a week away from it

00:50 and went over to one of the water camps and had a week off.

00:54 But we were threatened by our friends here that if we didn't show up today there'd be a riot.

01:01 And today is ballroom dancing, is that right?

01:04 It's ballroom and sequence, yes.

01:07 No Latin, but mainly sequence.

01:10 And tell us a bit more about the big secret.

01:12 So you've come here today and what has everyone been celebrating?

01:17 Well, we came here today basically a bit not knowing much about what was going to happen.

01:23 I mean, it's completely new to us and very, very acceptable.

01:29 And what are we celebrating?

01:32 Our 70th wedding anniversary, platinum one.

01:37 I mean that's an incredible achievement I think by anyone's standards.

01:41 If someone said to you today, you know, what's the secret?

01:46 How does a marriage last 70 years?

01:50 What would you say to them?

01:53 There was a bond really when we first met.

01:56 In those days, if you wanted to get from Leamington to Portishead where I was going to work,

02:05 it was over a half day's work, you know, traveling.

02:09 So we decided really on the spot that we were going to get married quickly, which we did at 20.

02:17 We had a caravan to start off with.

02:21 You got married by special license.

02:24 Oh yeah.

02:25 I had my right bands called in the wrong church.

02:29 I had them called in the Ascension Churches, Dumblinton Road, instead of St Mark's.

02:34 But anyway, that was...

02:36 So we had to go see the Bishop and Commentary to get permission to get married.

02:41 So you married at 20.

02:44 70 years on.

02:46 You're still ballroom dancing today.

02:49 When did that start?

02:51 Were you both already...

02:52 We were always dancing.

02:54 You were always dancing and you just came together and it's continued.

02:57 We had quite a layoff actually for a while.

03:02 And when we retired, we really took it up again with some friends, which was what, 2000, year 2000.

03:11 So really we've been sort of dancing as we are now for about 23 years.

03:15 But we were both dancers obviously when we were in our early years.

03:20 And what would you say to anyone who wanted to perhaps even take up ballroom dancing?

03:28 Come down, give it a try.

03:30 It's a wonderful physical exercise.

03:34 It's hard to start off with, to pick up the early steps.

03:39 But if they started on sequence and really stuck at it for a couple of months, I think they'd really take to it.

03:48 And as I say, it's a wonderful physical exercise.

03:53 It exercises all your body and your mind too really.

03:58 And you mean...

03:59 You can see it, the friends and everything you've got here.

04:02 Absolutely.

04:03 Well, congratulations firstly on your wedding anniversary.

04:07 It's a wonderful achievement and hopefully there'll be many more to come.

04:11 And I hope you have a wonderful day with your friends and have lots of dancing throughout the afternoon.

04:18 Thank you very much.

04:19 Thank you for coming.

04:20 No, thank you for having us.

04:21 Thank you.

04:22 [Music]

04:50 [Music]

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