I love my family. That seems a very obvious statement, but I have been surprised by how much my love for them has increased as I have aged and they have increased in number!
After 48 years of marriage we have 3 sons, 3 daughters-in-law and 6 grandchildren.
I first met Gordon in the Statistics honours class at Glasgow University. For two years we barely talked to each other, then at the final year dinner we chatted for the first time. He arranged to meet me under the pretext of showing me the photos from the dinner. That led to further meetings as he appeared to be interested in the fact that someone with a degree could possibly believe in God!
Gordon has his own story to tell including his own testimony, so I’ll just jump to the following year 1976 when we got married. See Our Wedding.
Our first home was a one bedroom main door flat in Queen’s Drive on the south side of Glasgow, overlooking Queen’s Park. We paid the princely sum of £8650, which was a lot in those days. It is worth as much as our four bedroomed house now!
Two years later we moved to a larger main door flat in Shields Road, Pollokshields, and a year later our first son David was born.
He was a very easy baby and slept well, so two years later in 1981 our second son Richard was born.
The following year we decided to move to East Kilbride for a variety of reasons. One reason was my health. Another was that we wanted an affordable house with a garden and central heating. The winter of 1981/82 was so cold in the flat that the water in the toilet was frozen and we had burst pipes. On 1st November 1982 we moved to a terraced house (ex-council house) in St Leonards, East Kilbride. This was a great house and we stayed there for almost 17 years.
See Work – Part 1 to find out what I did during the 1980s while the boys were small.
It was many years later, when the boys were almost 11 and 9, that our third son, Colin, was born in 1990.
His big brothers were really good with him and were delighted it was another boy. So was I.
In 1999 we moved to our current house in Stewartfield. We are very happy here and hope to stay as long as possible. We make use of all the rooms in our house, between business and family.
I feel incredibly blessed to have had three boys, and am extremely proud of each one of them. They are all married to amazing women and have their own families now.
Colin, the youngest, was the first to get married in 2010 to Emma. They have two beautiful girls and a son. We became very friendly with Emma’s family – the Campbells. They have joined us for Christmas dinner every year (other than during the pandemic). Emma’s mum Carolyn is now my best friend and we see each other every week. Sadly Emma’s dad John died in 2015.
David married Nelly in 2011 and now have a daughter and a son. Nelly is from Bulgaria, so I’m delighted that our family continues to be international. They live in Geneva and during Covid we were unable to see them all, which was really hard. We finally had a wonderful family get-together in April 2022 when they came over to celebrate Matthew’s first birthday.
They usually manage to come over at Christmas and we love to see the grandchildren all together.
Richard married Diana in 2014 and they now have an amazing little boy Matthew who was born in 2021.
Both Richard and Colin live in East Kilbride with their families so I’m really happy to have them nearby.
The above is very much a summary – there are too many details of a lifetime to put them here!
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