9:52am Friday 10th August 2007
By Chloe Lambert
A Roehampton couple, who met when he got on the wrong bus, celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary this week.
Jack and Joan Pook, now 85 and 87, first met on a snowy night back in 1947, when he wandered into The Red Rover pub in Roehampton Lane where she was drinking with friends. Mr Pook, who was on leave from the Navy at the time, was heading for Barnes Village but had got on a bus going the wrong way.
They hit it off straight away and were married six months later at St Margaret's Church, in Putney Park Lane, on August 9, 1947.
Mrs Pook said: "You know the old saying, opposites attract. He's a very quiet man. I'm outgoing and I like to go to parties."
Today she can be seen whizzing down the streets of Putney on her electric scooter.
The couple, who have lived in the same Roehampton house all their married life, are following a family tradition of celebrating anniversaries in the Wandsworth Borough News (sister paper of the Surrey Comet). Mrs Pook's parents lived in Dover Park Road, in Putney, and were featured in the paper when they toasted 50 years of marriage in 1962.
Mrs Pook said the secret to a lasting marriage was a sense of humour, which became all the more important after her husband was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease five years ago. "We musn't grumble," she said. "We've got each other."
Mr Pook, 85, said: "We're still going strong. We make each other laugh and she looks after me well."
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