WHEN Brian Barrett met his future wife Joan he knew she was perfect for him.

Headington-born former bookbinder Mr Barrett, who later worked for 17 years in the paint shop at Morris Motors, said: “We used to meet, a gang of fellas and ladies.

“We met 12 to 18 months before we got married.

“I told her father I thought she was great — she was 4ft 11ins so did me fine because I’m only 5ft 4ins. She was just right.”

Today the couple celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary.

The couple moved their young family into a brand new house in Kent Close, Blackbird Leys, in September 1958 — the first residents to move into the close off Sandy Lane.

Relieved to have moved from a tiny flat in Cowley, their three-bedroom house and garden was to become their home for 52 years.

Last night the happy couple, now both 78, described the estate as a “lovely place” to spend their married life.

Mr Barrett said: “We will never move from here.

“When we moved, Sandy Lane wasn’t a road, it was a brook. Before they filled in the brook my wife remembers wheeling the pram with the baby across a plank to get into Kent Close because the brook wasn’t filled in at the time.

“My wife hated the flat, when we were given the house it was exciting.

“Blackbird Leys was like a building site then. On the first day, when the wife put the washing on the line, a lorry driver came along Sandy Lane and drove straight into our clothes line.

“The driver said he didn’t think anyone had moved into the Close.”

Mr and Mrs Barrett plan to celebrate their anniversary with a family meal at the Loch Fyne restaurant in Walton Street on Sunday.

The couple put their six decades of wedded bliss down to “give and take” and overcoming their ups and downs by “just getting on with it”.

After striking up a friendship when they met at Bury Knowle Park in Headington, where their friends met to play ball games and dance, the couple tied the knot at Oxford Register Office, then in St Giles, on Thursday, May 27, 1950.

Mrs Barrett, from Sandhills, worked as a carpet seamstress and later in an office at Unipart until she was 65.

The couple, who have three children, Susan, 60, Stephen, 57, and Sharon, 55, and one grand-daughter Laura, 14, enjoy holidays to Malta, Holland and Jersey, and spending time in their garden.