AN INSEPARABLE couple celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary having lived through a love story reminiscent of Brief Encounter.

Sixty years after Sir John Donald and his wife Jean eloped, following what should have been a final farewell on a railway platform, the pair toasted their marriage at John’s care home Glenhurst Manor in Bournemouth with their children.

They had met and fallen in love at a dance in Aberdeen years earlier, but circumstances conspired against them and they drifted apart before Jean became engaged to another man.

Faced with the reality of being apart forever, their eyes locked on one another and they have not looked back since. “I was engaged to be married to somebody else so we had to elope,” added Jean.

“We got married on the Saturday and on the Tuesday we were travelling to Sri Lanka.”

John’s job as an RAF doctor saw him work in exotic locations around the world and he rose to the rank of director general of medical services.

The pair raised three children and lived in countries including Saudi Arabia, France and Holland.