JUNE 16 and 17 weren't just any old days marked off on Cliff and Shona Wickham's calendar.
The 16th was the day Shona received her second cornea transplant, on the 17th Cliff handed over the keys to the garage he's operated for the past 24 years.
For all but one of them, Shona has been his right hand woman (and the left one, too).
They hadn't planned their retirement from Cliff's Auto Services to start in such an eye-catching way but corneas don't become available every day.
Although corneas have a longer shelf life than other organs, once a perfect donor-recipient match is found, the medics are anxious to give it a new face to see out of as soon as practicable. Shona had five days' notice that there was one waiting with her name on it, a perfect match for the cornea implanted two years earlier.
Shona is acutely conscious that without her gifted "windows on the world" the couple's retirement would be blighted by her blindness.
Don't ask her to name her pretransplant affliction-"it's one of those big medical words with lots of letters in it"-but she and Cliff can talk for hours about their gratitude to those who've donated her corneas.
"We think they were wonderful people to give somebody else the gift of sight, it's such a fantastic thing. Naturally we've ticked that [donor] box too."
But we aren't here to dwell on their lives' inevitable end-Our People's job is to celebrate a couple who love life and live it with boundless enthusiasm . . . fun is their key word.
Anyone who's ever rubbed shoulders with them know Cliff and Shona are two of a kind, their customers embraced with friendship and high good humour. Theirs has been the personal approach only a family-run business can offer.
Operating first on Lake Rd then Karaka St, Cliff's Auto Services has had a loyal following.
"A lot of people have been faithful to us, people we've had a lot of fun with- it's been very hard saying goodbye," team Wickham says in unison.
Our People borrows the word "team" from Cliff-it's his description of the way he and Shona have worked together for nudging a quarter of a century.
"Shona's been an integral part of the business-she came in to do the books. Most mechanics hate book work, but she's a dab hand in the workshop too, a real pro bleeding brakes."
Shona came highly qualified in book work. Her working life began in the BNZ's Whakatane branch and she'd have happily stayed there-but marrying Cliff put paid to that. It wasn't her husband who forced her to give up work but then Prime Minister Rob Muldoon.
"It was his decree that women had to give up jobs like mine when they married, he said they were taking them off young girls."
Unimpressed, Shona moved to the local Ford garage,a work place happy to laugh at such blatant discrimination. Cliff was there too, he'd begun his apprenticeship in Hawera.
Almost inevitably when we ask how a couple met Our People's told "at a dance", "a party" or "through mates", certainly not as teenagers playing indoor bowls- yet that's exactly what brought the Wickhams together.
Shona doubts if she was 16 when they spied each other at an Ohope bowls night.
"It was very family-oriented, my parents were very involved, Cliff's parents had recently moved to Ohope and were too."
Shona learned the art of married couples working harmoniously together from her parents.
"They were a very successful combination running Ohope's butcher's shop."
Much of the Wickhams' courtship was conducted around the Whakatane region as regulars at Young Farmers Club balls, an ear cocked for the screech of a fire siren. Cliff was a member of the Ohope, then Whakatane, volunteer brigades.
"I thought it would be fun to be involved."
For Shona, the fun revolved around competition days.
"We'd come to Rotorua for the comps at Waipa where the mountain biking centre is now. We had a heck of a lot of fun. Cliff's team won the odd run but we went more for the
companionship than the competitive side."
Cliff became Cable Price's Rotorua service manager in 1986, switching to Waiariki two years on, to tutor automotive engineering. Cliff's Auto Services was a natural progression.
Cars aren't merely objects for him to fix-they're also objects of huge affection.
He's owned three classics and retains two-a1963 Anglia and a '65 Cortina-and has spent 18 years on the vintage and veteran club's committee, chairing it for six.
Shona shares his passion, as she does for their Jim Beam bottle collection.
Cliff, always big into motor trade memorabilia, branched into "Beamer" land when he bought his first "JB" bottle -unsurprisingly it was car-shaped.
"I fell in love with it and we went from there."
Naturally we do our duty and ask what's happened to the impressive collection's contents?
"We drank it, of course" . . . ask a silly question.
We come up with an equally stupid one, admitting we're not exactly sure what a strut is when Cliff says he's retained the Strutwise side of his "empire".
The answer's Cliff at his jolly best:
"They're like Viagra . . . keep things up"