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This is how Georgina Merriman’s story of how she found love on a train was printed in the Daily Mail newspaper.
By ALISON SMITH SQUIRE
Every night on the hour-long train journey home, Georgina Merriman would spend her time looking for love.
The 41-year-old City marketing executive visited dating websites and texted potential suitors from far and wide.
What she didn’t realise was that for almost a year, Mr Right had been sitting in the row behind her of Carriage D on the 5.33 from King’s Cross.
Eventually her eyes met Mark Ford’s as they both made their way to their regular seats.
And now they travel to work together side by side – as man and wife.
‘For 19 years I had commuted into London and hardly ever spoken to a fellow commuter,’ said Mrs Ford, who before her marriage lived in Grantham, Lincolnshire. ‘So I still can’t believe that the man I was going to marry was just inches away.’
Hand in hand with her husband, a 38-year-old underwriter, Mrs Ford said she had started looking for romance after two failed relationships. She met two dozen possible partners through a dating website but none was suitable.
Then one night Mr Ford, who was travelling home to Stevenage in Hertfordshire, said Hello.
‘As anyone who regularly commutes knows, people on trains don’t usually say Hello, let alone even meet your eye,’ she said. ‘So I responded with a quizzical smile and quickly sat down.’
Two days later, Mr Ford offered her the seat next to him but she was too embarrassed to take up his offer.
She decided, however, that she liked the look of him and, after discussing the matter with her boss at work, resolved that if the mystery man offered again she would say Yes. And the next evening, they met on the platform and decided to travel together.
‘Twenty minutes into the journey – at his Stevenage stop – we both got off and went for a drink,’ she said. ‘Mark ended up driving me home that night, all the way to Lincolnshire.’
The couple’s love affair with the railways didn’t stop there. They married last August after he proposed to her on a steam-train trip to Swanage.
