David and Mona Smith got married 65 years ago - and spent their first night together in a broken down car.

WHEN David and Mona Smith got married 65 years ago, they spent their wedding night in his aunt’s car – along with her.

“We were going to stay with her to have our honeymoon in Bury St Edmunds,” Mr Smith, 94, told The Hunts Post.

“Just as we were leaving, someone said, Dave, you’ve got a flat tyre. So I changed the wheel with the spare.

“In those days, cars weren’t checked like they are now, you could have bald tyres and rust.

“We were taking my Aunt Kate home because we were staying with her. We got as far as Victoria Road, Cambridge, and the other tyre went. So we spent the night on a garage forecourt.”

Mrs Smith, 89, added: “Aunt Kate was a card. She said to Dave: ‘Bugger it, boy, I’ve never known a man to suffer like you have. When we got to her house she gave us some breakfast and then she said: ‘You’ve been awake all night, you better get to bed’. I said what do we want to go to bed for? She said, ‘You’ll see’.”

The couple, who have lived in the same house in Fenstanton for 60 years, met during the Second World War.

“Mona lived in Fenstanton and used to cycle to work at the Air Ministry in Brampton. I was a lorry driver for the Keith Wright Dairy (now Dairy Crest) so I had three exemptions from military service.

“Another lorry driver used to put her bike on the lorry and give her a lift. When he went on holiday, he said: “There’ll be a girl standing at the clock tower with her bike.”

After a few lifts, he asked her out.

Mrs Smith said: “I liked the old boy, I don’t know why. He was good looking but he also had a nice way of looking after me.”

He was called up towards the end of the war and they married at the Church of St Peter and St Paul in Fenstanton on June 9, 1945, before he was posted to Egypt.

Mr Smith spent two-and-a-half-years abroad with just one home leave. After he was demobbed, he became a bus-driver and then worked as a tanker driver at RAF Wyton from 1957 until he retired in 1981.

As for the secret of a long and happy marriage, Mr said: “We both enjoyed different things, we used to go grass-track racing and to Silverstone. I used to make model aeroplanes and fly them at RAF Wyton – she used to fall in with what I did.”

Mrs Smith added: “We seemed to enjoy each other, we never had much to worry about.”