George and Patricia Frost in 1942 and back at Carnforth station

By GRAHAM KEELEY

THE setting was the same, but the ending was far happier.
Like Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard in the classic film Brief Encounter, George Frost and Patricia Dixon first set eyes on each other at Carnforth Railway station.
But unlike the married movie lovers who part for the sake of duty, George and Patricia were unattached and married within a year of their meeting at the windswept Lancashire station.
That was in wartime 1942.
They saw the film which made the station famous soon after it came out in 1945, but had never returned to the spot where they met more than half a century ago.
So the Daily Mail took George, now 83, and Patricia, 78, of Sabden, near Clitheroe, Lancashire, on an emotion- charged journey back to Carnforth.
Mrs Frost said: 'I felt like crying. We were delighted to see it again. The refreshment room where we started talking was boarded up, but the rest of it looked familiar particularly the clock.'
The station has fallen into disrepair over the years and was threatened with demolition. But enthusiasts have raised £900,000 to save it.. Even the clock, which in the film signals time is up for the two lovers, is to be restored.
George was a 24-year-old Royal Marine and Patricia a nurse of 20 when they met in 1941. in the mm, written by Noel Coward, romance blossoms when Johnson gets grit in her eye and Howard offers to bathe it.
For George and Patricia, there was a similar element of chance as they were having tea separately in the refreshment room while waiting for a train to Leeds.
'George turned around, but he had a tin helmet and a gas mask on his shoulder and they swung around and knocked the cup of tea out of his hand,' said Patricia. 'It made me laugh.'
George said: 'I remember an impudent devil of a young woman who was laughing at me. I rather liked her and we got on from the moment we met.'
George should have made the journey which took him to Carnforth station two days earlier, but after returning from fighting in West Africa he needed hospital treatment.
They. spent nearly two hours together on the train. George took Patricia's address and promised to send her a book of poetry called The White Cliffs, by American author Alice Duer Miller.
After George returned from the war, he went back to his job as a journalist in Barrow, Cumbria. They had three sons and now have five grandchildren.

© Daily Mail Newspaper, 7 ^th February 2000

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