A COUPLE who have always lived in Sale, and still work for the community, will celebrate their diamond wedding anniversary tomorrow.

Now in their 80s, Derek and Edna Blain, from Stokesay Road, run the annual poppy appeal at St Mary’s Church, Harboro Road, last year raising £300.

Both Christians, they married there in 1956 and both of them belong to the Mothers' Union!

The pair belong to the North Cheshire Centre of the National Trust attending monthly meetings at St Peter’s Assembly Rooms, Hale.

Once a month Derek helps at the Sale West Food Bank and is a committee member of the Friends of Ashton Park.

Their 23-strong family including two children, Jillian and Roger, eight grandchildren and six great grandchildren, will celebrate at the Evesham Hotel, half way between the North and South where their children live.

Although they had known each other since Derek was at Manchester Grammar School and Edna at Sale Grammar School, they really got together when acting as escorts for mutual friends at Ashton-on-Mersey Cricket and Tennis club where they played doubles.

Their reception was at Park House, Northenden Road.

Derek spent 15 years with an engineering firm in Denton and 18 years at Allot and Lomax, the Sale architects, eventually becoming an associate director.

Before she had the children and nursed her parents and Derek’s mother, Edna worked for an international bank in Manchester.

Their secret for a happy marriage is “having both shared and individual interests,” said Derek

“We rub along nicely,” said Edna