Two of a kind: Bev and Trev pool their skills as volunteers at our Bromborough Croft Trade Park charity showroom

When you meet Bev and Trev, or Trev and Bev even, you’ll soon realise why they’ve been happily married since 1981 (no way) after they’d met, as 17 year olds, three years earlier

They sometimes finish each other’s sentences and always look at, and laugh with, each other, in that way, as they tell some of their stories and why they volunteer together for Wirral Hospice St John’s.

Bev, from Wallasey originally, is a former nurse who trained as a cadet at Birkenhead General and Trev is a mechanical engineer who finished his career at Deeside power station.

In the early years of their marriage they travelled a little bit as Trev was stationed at Hartlepool nuclear power station while Bev practiced her nursing, at that time, at South Cleveland hospital.

They even describe a short period where they moved to Monroe in Michigan, USA, and an abiding memory is that you could only buy, “the worst baked beans in the World.”  HaHa! They had to go over the border to Canada to find the kind of beans we all know and love in the UK.

Between 1986 and 1989 their two daughters, Amy and Emma, came along and they decided they’d like to bring them up in Wirral. Now they have three grandchildren, Amy has Lyra, six,  and Emma has Arnold and Douglas, eight and eleven. Nice!

After retirement Bev had volunteered at Irby library (now sadly closed) and Trev, among other hobbies, is a member of the SingMe Merseyside choir under the tutelage of local Radio Merseyside personality, Billy Hui. SingMe organise concerts and support charity events around the region and they were appearing at the hospice’s 40^th anniversary celebrations last year.

Hospice volunteer manager, Phil, had a stall set up during the event and Bev approached him with a view to volunteer for the hospice. The rest is history!

They now volunteer at our Bromborough Croft showroom. Bev works inside sorting, selling and serving and Trev is most often in a hospice van picking up and dropping off the kind of pre-loved quality items of clothing, bric-a-brac, accessories and sometimes the smaller furniture, which are shared around some other charity shops in our estate.

Trev is also a dab hand at assembling ‘stuff’, well he is an engineer, so you’ll sometimes find him on his knees screwing a headboard to a donated bed or standing up fixing a cupboard door to a modern wardrobe.

They really enjoy their volunteering,

“John is a great manager.” Says Bev. “He’s so well organised and he keeps our other volunteer friends, who are just amazing, happy and motivated. As well as some of the best quality pre-loved furniture and other items you’ll see in a charity outlet, there’s a lovely atmosphere here too which we hope comes over to our customers.”

We’re sure it does Bev and Trev and all the more because you guys are there!

Thank you both so much for your precious time.

Our Bromborough Croft showroom is open at the Croft Trade Park in Bromborough, Monday to Saturday, 9am to 4.30pm. If you’d like to donate larger items of furniture, please call 0151-334 2558 to arrange for a pick-up.

A full list of all Wirral Hospice St John’s charity shops is at www.wirralhospice.org/charityshops  and, if you’d like to volunteer in our shops you can also contact us by email at volunteering@wirralhospice.org and we can send you all the relevant details.