“REGULAR rowing” is the secret to keeping a marriage going for 70 years, according to a teasing Robert Timms, who celebrated the milestone with his wife Betty on Saturday.

“We sit across the table, and row about all our illnesses and ailments to each other, and when we get to the seventh one we start laughing and we forget all about what the row was over,” said the 91-year-old.

“The most important thing is to talk to each other. If you talk to each other and listen to each other you can get through most things.

“What you mustn’t do is run away.”

The couple, who celebrated their platinum wedding anniversary with a party surrounded by all their family on Saturday evening, first met while working in the railway works before the Second World War.

Betty, 92, said: “We both worked at the railway works. I hotted up the rivets and passed them to the men to hammer in.”

Robert said: “When I saw her I turned to my work mates and said ‘that’s a very pretty girl over there, I’m going to ask her out’.”

Betty said: “The problem was that, because of all the steam and soot from the fire, I couldn’t really see him and I just said ‘yes’ anyway.”

They were married on October 14, 1944, at St Mark’s Church before a reception at the Cross Keys Hotel, in Wood Street.

Robert said: “I was on top of the world that day because she’d agreed to marry me.”

Betty said: “I was more nervous I think. I’ve always been a bit more nervous.

“I had a lovely dress with the sleeves detached a bit at the top.

“We had a proper meal at the hotel and we were lucky enough to have a wedding cake. It was a war wedding, you see, and having a cake was a pretty rare thing.”

In 1943, Robert was called up to join the war effort, and he joined the Royal Engineers’ bomb disposal unit in London.

He said: “It was an interesting job. It was very dangerous at times. Sometimes we were crawling along under bombs and examining the fuses using mirrors.

“After the war I went back to he railway works. I loved it. It was very matey. If you were ever in any trouble, you knew there would be two or three people just round the corner who would come and offer to help.”

Robert and Betty’s lives have not been without sadness after their eldest two children, Jill and Robin, both lost their battles with cancer at the ages of 66 and 52 respectively.

Their youngest son, Andrew, lives nearby and their 20 grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren regularly visit the pair at their Rodbourne home.