During my second spell of working in Spain, I was living in Castelldefels, which is 20 kilometres south of Barcelona. An office friend, Paddy, also lived there and quite often after work we’d have a drink or two in the city and then I’d drive us home in my little Citroen 2CV.
Once in our little town, Paddy often suggested we had ‘one for the road’ before he returned to his wife and children. One of these evenings we stopped at a place called the Hotel Copacabana.
Nursing our drinks we watched two ladies at the bar talking in French to the barman. Having had sufficient to drink to be able to speak fluent French we approached them. They were British and had just flown from Africa to escape the Biafran war in Nigeria, and had stopped at Barcelona before returning to Britain.
Long story short. Soon afterwards in the summer of 1967 Valerie Hill with Jan who was I think 5 or 6, and Don perhaps nearly 3, came to live with me in La Raconada in Castelldefels. In April 1968 we moved back to the UK, married in August, and Diana was born at our house in Firfield Road in Addlestone near Weybridge on 7th October 1969. We lived here until we emigrated to Hong Kong in early 1973.
Most of the photos of Valerie are included in our various homes we shared in La Zorrita in Spain, Repulse Bay and Eredine in Hong Kong, Stablewalls and The Mount in Cheshire. Sadly we separated after twenty years and were divorced in 1990, but have remained friends since.
Some of my favourite photos
There are some photos not taken at our homes, some in Hong Kong, others when we were on holiday. Valerie’s parents Albert and Mary lived in Whiteley Bay near Newcastle and we went there often when we lived in the UK.
Also, we holidayed in Ullswater in the Lake District, but also on various trips around the world when we lived in Hong Kong, to Malaysia, Thailand, Manila, Hawaii, San Francisco and touring California. Unfortunately, I do not have many photos of most of those holidays
