Mr David Blackman wishes to give recognition to his late wife Mrs Joye Blackman who he fell in love with immediately in the 1950s.

Mr Blackman met his future wife back in the 50s when he was waiting for a train to Peterborough. He was completing his national service in the army at the time.

The train master who knew Joye was able to find them an empty carriage, and they spoke for the whole journey.

“By the time we got to Peterborough, I was well and truly in love with her,” Mr Blackman said.

Mr Blackman left the train station in Peterborough without the girl he’d met name, just the memory of her luggage label.

When he arrived home, he told his parents he needed to go out straight away as he had “met quite a lovely girl.”

He got on his running tracksuit and ran a mile to where the girl on the train lived, and by coincidence, she was walking up the street.

They spoke for a few minutes before she said that she needed to go inside her house to cook her father supper.

“That’s when I just put my hands on her waist and kissed her,” Mr Blackman said. “I didn’t even know her name.”

Joye and David “courted” throughout university, got married in 1961 after Mr Blackman had finished his studies, and moved to Reading.

Mrs Blackman was for many years Head of the Geography Department at Southlands School, and later at the Hemdean House School in Caversham.

She remained a popular addition to the teaching staff at both schools for almost 40 years, during which she made her subject one of the most enjoyable on the syllabus.

She also regularly impressed school inspectors.

Throughout her career, Mrs Blackman firmly believed that Geography was not just a subject for inside the classroom and took her classes on frequent field trips.

In both of the schools in which she taught, she was active in educating her pupils to both GCE O-level and A-level standards.

Apart from getting her pupils through their exams, Joye set up after-school geography clubs that were regularly packed with pupils of all ages.

Mr Blackman was a Government Scientist at AWRE at Aldermaston and later a civil servant at Whitehall.

When asked if he could describe what his marriage to Joye was like, Mr Blackman replied “We were both in love, it’s as simple as that. I was very lucky.”

Mr Blackman acknowledges his wife as someone who will be sorely missed by everyone who knew her. She was over 89 years old when she passed away.