When we married in 1969, Cheran and I bought a house in Shoreham by Sea, about half a mile from the local lifeboat station.  Cheran was immediately fascinated by the exploits of the Shoreham Harbour lifeboat and, whenever the 'maroons' were fired, we would jump into the car and drive down to Kingston Beach, hoping to be in time to see the lifeboat slide down its slipway.  Sometimes we also waited to see its return.

After five years, we moved nearer to the centre of Shoreham, but Cheran retained her interest.  Once, at our home in the 1980s, our plumber David Wainwright (a lifeboat crew member) received a 'shout', and from then on, Cheran's enthusiasm for lifeboats knew no bounds.  She joined the local Ladies Lifeboat Guild, helped them to run sales and coffee mornings, and went house to house collecting membership subscriptions.

Whenever Dave visited us on a plumbing job, the conversation turned to lifeboats.  He took us on a tour of the lifeboat station and also encouraged Cheran to start collecting lifeboat postcards and other lifeboat related items, such as books and teddy bears.  During our many happy holidays on the English coast and in Jersey, Cheran then visited scores of lifeboat stations, taking photographs and buying postcards at each one. 

In 1990, HRH Princess Alexandra came to name Shoreham's new Tyne class lifeboat, Hermione Lady Colwyn.  Cheran asked for, and was given, permission to make a video recording of not only the ceremony itself, but also the preparations over the preceding months.  This was later presented to the crew.  By then, Dave Wainwright was Head Launcher.

In 1991, Cheran and our daughter Susan entered a pram race in aid of the local lifeboat, and Cheran came away with the prize for 'heaviest baby', destroying the said pram in the process.  In the ten years that followed, she enjoyed walking the English coastline with me, always sporting her favourite lifeboat sweatshirts.

When she began to suffer health problems that restricted her ability to take energetic holidays, Cheran encouraged me to continue doing long distance walks around the coasts of England and Wales, taking photographs and purchasing postcards to enhance her growing collection of both lifeboats and lifeboat stations, past and present.  She joined the Lifeboat Enthusiasts Society and was an avid reader of their excellent magazine.  We were both honoured in 1997 to join the lifeboat on a training exercise, which proved one of the happiest days of her later life.

Even after taking up residence in a local nursing home, Cheran enjoyed revisiting her many albums of lifeboat photographs and watching lifeboat videos.  And, before her death in April 2020, she provided in her will for a substantial gift to the RNLI, and the donation to the Enthusiasts of her collection of teddy bears, books and lifeboat models, to assist in their fund-raising.  Her ashes were later scattered in the sea off Shoreham Beach from our new Tamar lifeboat, Enid Collett. 

I have now taken over her eleven-album collection of postcards and photographs of lifeboats and lifeboat houses.  Each picture I add to it will be a memory of my dear Cheran's enthusiasm for the lifeboat service.