As the Yorkshire husband retires, we're donning matching anoraks and heading off for new adventures – Susan Morrison

This week the Yorkshire husband will work his last shift and become a retired person.
Susan Morrison and her Yorkshire husband have turned into one of those couples who wear matching anoraks (Picture: Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images)Susan Morrison and her Yorkshire husband have turned into one of those couples who wear matching anoraks (Picture: Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images)
Susan Morrison and her Yorkshire husband have turned into one of those couples who wear matching anoraks (Picture: Christophe Archambault/AFP via Getty Images)

This is unnerving on two counts. One, I didn’t realise he actually meant it, and, two, that he was old enough to do so.

We met at work. The ABC Cinema on Lothian Road. I’d been transferred up from Rochdale to take over from him. He was the house manager. He was heading back down south to run his own cinema, and to get married, which he did, five years later than planned. To me.

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Had I been transferred one week later, or sent to Glasgow instead, we wouldn’t have met. And, of course, if I hadn’t been such a shameless scarlet woman and flirted so outrageously, he would have walked down quite a different aisle, and so, I suspect, would I.

The working world continued to rule our lives. Our lives have always been juggling shifts, timetables and school runs. When the kids were small, there were times when we barely saw one another. Holiday dates had to be planned around terms and subject to management approval and then fitted in with the demands of teams we worked with.

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Now, why, if we fancy a day in Oban, why not? Obviously, not by rail. Anyway, we have bus passes now, and can jaunt about to our hearts content.

He’s made it clear that he’s not going to just sit about the house. I made it clear, too. Every house has those little jobs that niggle. Now is the time to fix them. I produced a notebook. “Here is my list,” I said.

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“Which page is it on?” He said. “It's the notebook,” I said. It's a big notebook.

We've turned into one of those old couples who wear matching anoraks and donder along the proms on nice days. On rainy days, we go to museums. We went to one recently. We mooched a display of 20th century appliances barking “we had one of those. And those. Remember those things? They were rubbish.”

It’s time for new adventures for us, still together after all these years.

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