"WE do crosswords - but we never have cross words."

The words of York 90-year-old Frank Maguire, who was today celebrating 65 years of happy marriage to Dora.

"It has been a very good marriage," he said. "She has been a lovely wife."

But the couple went through enforced separation for several years early in their marriage after Frank was called up and became one of the original Desert Rats, taking part in the Battle of El Alamein and seeing Churchill and "Monty" during their famous visit to troops in the desert.

"I came back in one piece," said Frank. But the couple's first daughter Margaret, born just months after Frank had set off for the Middle East, was aged three-and-a-half on his return and had to get to know the stranger who was her father.

The couple had another child, Derek, and now have four grand-daughters, Kate, Jane, Elisabeth and Carolyn, and four great-grandchildren Danielle, Georgia-Lee, Jacob and Melissa.

They had met through their work for the Post Office in the north-east in the 1930s, and Frank worked in telecommunications for all his career. The couple moved to York when he got promoted in 1949. Dora worked for Thomas Cook, which helped when they decided to travel the world on Frank's retirement.

They went to visit relatives in Australia, and also crossed America on a Greyhound bus, and travelled across Canada and Russia in trains.

Frank was 90 in March, and Dora reaches the same milestone next month, and the couple have combined their birthday celebrations with one for their wedding anniversary.

Frank revealed their anniversary joy had been capped by a card from the Queen.

Updated: 10:45 Saturday, April 19, 2003