My two dogs are called Rambo and Jasper. Rambo was my husband Francesco’s, but he died about a year ago, and so I inherited his dog. I was married to Francesco for forty seven years, and I went on looking after him even after we separated. We met at a friend’s house in Middlesbrough. Francesco, who was a seaman from Malta, had been invited round, and I was told to be nice to him and to make him feel at home. I clearly succeeded because no sooner had I started chatting to him than he asked me to marry him. I thought that was a funny thing to do, but as a joke I said to him that if he had enough money I’d accept him. He took two hundred pounds, which was a lot of money in those days, out of his back pocket and gave it to me, and we went and spent most of it together that afternoon. We got a special license to marry the next day, which we could do because he was a seaman. I turned up at the Registry Office at the appointed time, and to my surprise he did too, so we were married less than twenty four hours after we first met. The only hitch was that his writing wasn’t good enough for him to write his name on the marriage register and the official wouldn’t let me do it for him, so that caused a right carry-on. Frank never learned to read or write. He was brought up by his aunty because his mum died having him, and no one ever seemed to have bothered about him much.

Three days later Frank phoned his sister in Malta to say he was married and she sent two plane tickets for us to fly to Malta for a honeymoon. I thought we were going for a few weeks but we stayed four years. I learned Maltese and lived with the family in a big house in Valletta. I came back in the end because I missed my mum. We had a house in Middlesbrough, but Frank wasn’t there much - his job as a merchant seaman took him away sometimes for eighteen months at a time, and then he would only be home for a few weeks before the phone would ring and he would be off again. I suppose that was why we drifted apart over the years and went our own ways, though we continued to be friends, and I looked after him up to the day he died. And Rambo and Jasper, our two dogs, are still good mates.

I don’t see anyone at home now, but I go to the pensioners’ bingo every day except Sunday. I have two sons, Manuel and Francesco; one of my sons bothers with me but I don’t see much of the other one. I spend most of my time in my front room where I’ve got plenty to look at, mostly photographs of film stars, and there is a photograph of Frank looking like a film star.