Fifty years of love and 30 newspaper adverts in SUR to shout it out to the world

For decades James has been telling the world how much he loves his wife Mercy. The couple have five children and four grandchildren and have been living in Spain, in Mijas to be precise, for 40 years

Lorena Cádiz

Mijas

Friday, 6 December 2024, 12:25

A hand-painted portrait presides over the living room of James and Mercy Chapman in their house in Mijas. It is of Mercy herself, more than 50 years ago, posing face-on with a twinkle in her eyes and eye-catching beauty. It was that portrait that would change the life of James, when one day now more than half a century ago, he walked into the Hotel Tropicana in Benidorm, a young man on holiday with his family.

He saw the portrait and decided to buy it without knowing who the girl was and barely having the money the artist was asking for it. And he did not imagine that just a few minutes later he would bump into the young woman in the hotel. James did not hesitate; he stopped her and offered to buy her a beer. She accepted and that’s how they met. He lived in Exeter; she was a nurse in London. He was in Spain on a family holiday; she had just been through a tough time at work with the death of a patient and had decided to take some time off.

He fell head over heels. She had just enjoyed a nice chat. He had given her his telephone number in England, in case she wanted to get in touch. But James’s holiday came to an end, he went home and the days went by without a call from Mercy. He started to despair; he was convinced that he had found the love of his life. It was then that he decided to turn to the telephone directory and call all the hospitals in London to ask if they had a Mercy working as a nurse. Several days and many calls later he found one hospital that said there were two girls with that name but they gave him no more details. So he got on his motorbike and set off for the capital.

“I thought he was crazy, but then I started to realise that he was serious,” Mercy recalls. Whatever the case, James’s plan worked: first because she agreed to marry him and second because they have now spent 50 happy years together. They have five children, four grandchildren and have been living in Spain, in Mijas to be precise, for 40 years.

Move to Spain

James and Mercy came to the Costa del Sol after a previous holiday during which they had noticed that the skin condition of one of their children improved considerably in the Spanish sunshine. It was then that they decided to change their lives and leave England.

Now they feel lucky to have taken that turn in their lives, but their new life was not always easy. James was a silversmith in England and designed jewellery, but in Spain he was unable to find a job in his profession. Neither did Mercy find a job as a nurse and for a while they lived with three children in a one-bedroomed apartment and very little to live on. But all that changed; they set up a property maintenance business and their life started to improve.

It was a call for contributions to a Valentine’s message page in SUR in English that began a tradition that James has continued to this day: to tell the world of his love for his wife through the pages of a newspaper.

“His first message won us a dinner at a restaurant on the road up to Mijas,” Mercy recalls.

Adverts

And when it wasn’t in a message on a Valentine’s page it was in an advertisement that he declared his love for Mercy.

“I did it the first time that I could afford to,” explains James, who went on to write a football column for this newspaper. Since then, every time an important date on the calendar approaches, such as wedding anniversaries or Valentine’s Day, James takes out an advertisement to tell the world his feelings or write a poem for his wife. Now he looks back and calculates that over the years he has published some 30 adverts in the newspaper, the most recent just two weeks ago - a full page in SUR in English and Spanish - to mark their golden wedding anniversary.

“I want the whole world to know about my love for my wife,” he says with emotion.

“The first time I saw the advert I thought he was crazy and I still think he is today. But, why not? It’s his way of expressing himself and I accept him as he is. We are together and with God’s help we will be together for many more years,” says Mercy. “I wouldn’t change it for the world.”

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