Senior moments for Golden Couple

On Saturday (March 22) they are holding a party for close friends and family to mark their 50th wedding anniversary, and will be joined by their four children.

Sunday is another day of celebration - Joyce will be 70 years old, and middle daughter Kay also has a birthday and will be inviting her own friends too.

Oldest daughter Helen will be visiting from Lincolnshire with husband Robert and sons Nathan and Oliver, and youngest daughter Beverley will be making the trip from Spain with husband Brian.

Their son Stephen will be coming from Buckinghamshire, and the party itself will be held in Kay's home in Pebsham, where she lives with husband Mark, and their children are Rachel, Andrew and Sarah.

Also there will be Joyce's sisters - June, who lives in France, and Christine who is coming from Bexley Heath.

Derek's brother Brian - who was their best man - will be making the journey from Bromley with wife Daphne, and also expected are his three great childhood pals David Jingell, Peter Maunders and Denis Phelps, and their wives - they all married within a few years of each other and have stayed friends ever since.

Joyce said: "I am really excited and looking forward to it. Now the

family is scattered like they are, it is not that often we all get together at the same time. We have even got friends coming over from Portugal who we have known for 40 years."

She was just 18 when she met her future husband at the Salvation Army Youth Club in East Dulwich. She was a quiet girl who made tea and kept to herself, so Derek didn't talk to her until his friend Denis introduced them and suggested they make up a foursome to go to Brighton.

"That was it," said Derek.

"We went down to Brighton for the day. Six weeks later we got engaged... because we went out every night after that. It was instant."

They married 18 months later at St Barnabas church in East Dulwich and settled locally before moving to Bromley where they brought up their family and lived for 30 years.

Derek had trained as a carpenter and went into the building industry; he moved into building management and surveying, and worked for the GLC as senior surveyor until he retired in 1990.

The couple moved to Bexhill five years ago, and reside in Beacon Hill. They are both busy and creative - Derek is practical and turns his hand to making anything from a garden swing to a rocking horse, while Joyce enjoys spending her time with craftwork such as patchwork, embroidery, crochet and knitting.