MURIEL and Horace Moss fell in love after he helped her take a corpse to a hospital mortuary.

Now more than 60 years later they celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary on Christmas Eve.

Their chilly first meeting was at Leigh Infirmary, where Muriel was a nurse and Horace was on fire watch.

The Mosses live in Howe Bridge and former district nurse Muriel, 82, still works one day a week at Leigh's Oxfam shop where she has been a volunteer since it opened.

Following wartime fire service Horace, 91, was a draughtsman at Sutcliffe Speakman in Leigh and retired after 30 years at the NW Electricity Board Manchester Road headquarters in Bolton.

He is president of the Lancashire, Cheshire and Merseyside Allotment Society, but five years ago the Mosses had to give up gardening when the LUT allotments at Howe Bridge went for housing development.

"They've built a house on top of my strawberry bed," sighed Horace.

Muriel said: "We never had to buy a vegetable. We both loved gardening. We have had a lovely life together after meeting carrying a dead man to the mortuary. Horace offered and that was it."

They have a son, retired bio-chemist Dr David Moss, who lives in Yorkshire, and three grandsons.