| Clare-Louise Smith
Clare was born on 6th May 1983 at Countess of Chester Hospital. She has lived in Frodsham, Chester, Heidelberg, Widnes and now resides in Manchester. She attended Orchard House Infant school and The Manor County Junior school (which was later to become The Manor House County Primary school) and attained both GCSE's and A-Levels in French, German, English Language and General Studies from Helsby High School. Following a year out working for HBOS, during which she attained an A-Level in Spanish at West Cheshire college, she enrolled on the BA in Modern European Languages at Liverpool University. She completed this in June 2006 and graduated 2:1 (with a distinction in the spoken use of German). During this course, she took a year abroad at Heidelberg University, and has hence become very attached to Germany.
Following this, she took a position at Emirates airlines, whilst also doing a part-time MA in Translation and Interpreting Studies at the University of Manchester. Sadly, this job was not for her and due to ill health had to resign her post. However things looked up earlier this month as she was offered a job as translations coordinator at Transglobal Languages and Cultures, a job which is very much what she enjoys doing.
In her spare time she likes to immerse herself in foreign cultures, such as foreign films and literature. She also likes to work out at the Gym and is there most nights of the week and sometimes at weekends too!
Philip Peartree
Philip was born on 28th May 1983 at the Countess of Chester Hospital. He grew up in Kingsley and feels a special bond with the small village. He attended the Kingsley Community Primary school from age 4 to 11, and then moved on to Helsby High School where he attained his GCSE's and A-levels in Chemistry, Physics, Maths and General Studies.
Following this, he enrolled to study Chemistry at UMIST (now absorbed into the University of Manchester) and after 3 years of hard study (ha!) graduated with a 2:2. After this he successfully attained an MSc in Cheminformatics. He is currently completing a Ph.D at the Manchester Interdisciplinary Biocentre under the supervision of Prof. Michael Sutcliffe on the computational modelling of enzymic hydrogen tunneling, where he is also part-time systems administrator.
In his spare time he enjoys socialising with friends in some of Manchester's many wonderful bars, playing about with computers, cooking, travelling (although I prefer the travel bit rather than the being there) and spending money
How we met
It’s amazing how far we’ve come when you consider how we met each other. Our lives were first cast together at the beginning of high school, where we found ourselves in the same form (7JR). Clare found Philip to be somewhat of an irritation which often led to bouts of violence and a general dislike for one another. There were a few particularly nasty incidents involving, for example, the pulling down of skirts and the attempted removal of a certain person’s oesophagus… Definitely NOT a case of love at first sight... or was it?
As time went by, our relationship warmed up, and we began to see each other as good friends. By the time 6th form came round we were part of the same group of friends and were socialising regularly. Then university happened. Courtesy of Clare's year out, I went to university in Manchester while Clare was still back home in Cheshire, and so we didn't see very much of each other from then onwards, except for the odd meet-up at the Bears Paw in Frodsham
In the early part of 2005 Clare was going through a tough time, as she was in Heidelberg and had just split up with her long-term boyfriend. Somehow we ended up chatting most nights on the internet (thank you MSN) and we arranged a date on her return. The date went swimmingly and we started going out. A year later I took Clare on a surprise trip to Oslo and proposed on our anniversary (18th February) she said yes, and the rest, as they say, is history!
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