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It was through her sister Susan that I first met Ruth. Susan and I had been introduced as two newbie students at the church we went to when we first moved to Aberdeen University in 1969. Len was a curate there and he and Ruth hit it off and after getting married moved to Dundee.
In 1977 Susan got in touch with me (now married but still in Aberdeen) to say that Ruth and Len were moving back to Aberdeen with a young baby and could I befriend her and introduce her to others? It was a perfect request as it turned out that Ruth and I both had young babies born just a day apart and from then on we met regularly for a cup of tea (for me - though Ruth never had tea or coffee) to compare notes, let the youngsters play together and generally chat to sort out the world.
In due course we both went on to have another boy, Ruth ahead of me with Simon, then I had Peter. When Pete was 6 months old, we moved to the Black Isle after my husband, Ian, got a promotion to work in Inverness. Just after we had moved to the Black Isle Len and Ruth with their growing family came to stay with us. These were the days when to reach the Black Isle you caught the Kessock ferry from South to North Kessock, and during their visit they took the opportunity to explore Inverness.
What they saw obviously suited them as soon after their return to Aberdeen the opportunity arose for Len to take charge of St Michael's and All Angels in Abban Street in Inverness. They moved to Inverness into the vast Rectory at St Michael's. There, Ruth and I continued where we had left off, meeting regularly to chat and to let our growing families play - Ruth's third, Mary, in 1980 and mine Sarah in 1981.
During this time Ruth demonstrated some of the talents that she developed in the ensuing years into setting up her dressmaking and then ecclesiastical businesses - namely that she could knock up clothes for the children in no time at all. Probably her most important talent was to be able to work focused and fast, but she was also extremely artistic.
This meeting up on a regular basis must have gone on until the children went to school - at least the eldest ones - after which it was difficult to find a time to meet that fitted in with school hours. But then we ourselves branched out into jobs and did not have the time to sit around chatting as we did then.
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