A VIRUS which swept through a cruise liner did nothing to deter a Tavistock couple from celebrating their diamond anniversary. Ivon and Heather Sleep booked to go on the Van Gogh cruise ship to Norway to mark their 60th wedding anniversary with their children. But after leaving on May 16 within two days more than 100 passengers and crew suffered from diarrhoea and vomiting. Heather caught the virus in the early hours of May 20 and had it for 48 hours. Then on May 22, the day they left, Ivon fell victim to it. When the ship, which can carry up to 795 passengers, docked at Harwich in Essex it was detained by the coastguard and 500 new passengers were turned away. Heather said: ?It was so infectious. Everybody was going down with the bug. An elderly man even had kidney failure and was on a drip.? Despite the ordeal Heather still had kind words to say about the crew aboard the Van Gogh: ?I can?t say enough about them. The crew did so well. They were so kind and were wonderful on our diamond wedding. It was really marvellous.? The couple met in September 1934 at Tavistock Grammar School and remained friends. They knew each other well as their fathers were both rural district councilors and their mothers were both WI chairmen. Heather was born in Zanzibar, Africa, and lived there until she was nine years old then moved to Coryton with her family. Ivon lived in Bere Alston until he left to join the army in 1938. In 1941 he was sent overseas where he was involved in the Battle of El Alamein and became partly deaf after an armoured car he was in blew up. Aged 19, he was taken prisoner by the Italians but escaped just 24 hours later, ?I didn?t really want to stay,? he said. He was in Austria until the end of the second world war in 1945 where he stayed as a field engineer. After Ivon returned from the war he and Heather married in 1946 at Emmanuel Church in Plymouth, where she had been christened. Lieutenant Colonel Ivon Sleep, his correct title, served in the army for the survey department where he developed maps until he retired in 1970. He then worked for the South West region, Ordnance Survey. In 1976 the pair went to Antigua in the Caribbean as Ivon was sent on an overseas survey. Heather helped the British Red Cross while she was there by teaching painting to the deaf and dumb. Ivon was a founder member of Tavistock and District Forum and the Probus Club for retired professional businessmen, and Heather, who has been a keen artist since 1968, was recently made an honorary member of the Tavistock Group of Artists. ?We have led an absolutely wonderful life,? said Heather.
