|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
With a cheeky grin and a laugh, Wayne Pinny describes the way he met the woman he would go on to marry as a “wee bit different”.
He and wife Beryl live at Pakuranga Park Village and are among the couples the Times is speaking to about love and romance to coincide with St Valentine’s Day today, February 14.
Back in the 1960s, Wayne and several mates would drive around the country to go camping during the summer holiday and over Easter.
One year they ended up at a lake on the West Coast of the South Island.
The next morning one of Wayne’s mates noticed a bus had arrived and among the disembarking passengers were two girls.
“So we went over and started talking to Beryl and her girlfriend,” Wayne says.
“They asked us where we were going for New Year’s and we said, ‘hopefully Queenstown’.”
The two groups eventually parted ways and not long after Wayne and his mates were in the bar of a hotel on the shores of Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown.
One of them looked outside and saw Beryl and her girlfriend lying on the beach nearby.
“One of my mates said, ‘you know those two girls we saw on the bus, they’re lying on the beach’,” Wayne recounts.
“I said, ‘are they?’ We looked and these two girls are lying on the beach with small bikinis on.
“I said to one of the guys, ‘See the one there on the left – which happened to be Beryl – I’m going to see if I can pick her up and drop her in the tide.”
At this point of Wayne’s telling of the story Beryl interjects to say the water was “freezing cold”.
Wayne continues: “I snuck down there and I just picked her up, carried her out into the tide and threw her into the tide, the freezing cold water of Lake Wakatipu.
“Her girlfriend said, ‘I’ll get the police!’ and Beryl said, ‘No, these guys are fun!’.”
Wayne and Beryl enjoyed a New Year’s Eve party together on the steamship TSS Earnslaw.
Following that they each returned to their separate lives, until they later reconnected and went on to get married in 1971 when they were both aged in their early 20s.
They have two adult daughters and have lived in places including Auckland, Tauranga and Fiji.
Wayne worked as a civil engineer while Beryl was a hairdresser.
“We’re two very independent people and we often clash a bit, but I think that has had a lot to do with keeping our relationship alive,” Wayne says.
“I think we just got on with life. Our situation has changed somewhat. We’re both 76 or 77, but throughout the years we’ve had a lot of fun.
“The two of us are party people, social people. Wherever we live we were always known as ‘the party house’.
“We’ve had a hell of a lot of variety in our life, which has a lot to do with us bonding together and staying together.
“The essence to our longevity or spark is we enjoyed life to the full and we enjoyed what each of us did. I look back now and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Beryl has a humorous response to the question of what she loves about Wayne, saying she initially thought he was a “pain in the a**”.
“He kept catching up with me because he wanted his hair cut all the time,” which is a quip that makes them both laugh.
