80 1GM Saturday September 5 2020 | the times
Readers’ Lives
night on Skomer, where he proposed
in a hide with a ring.
Save-the-date cards were sent to
100 guests for an outdoor ceremony
to be held under a 550-year-old oak
tree in Ros’s family garden on August
15 followed by a hog roast and a
ceilidh band. Then coronavirus hit
and they scaled down their original
plan. As restrictions eased, they
arranged a smaller ceremony under
the huge tree with a humanist
celebrant and 20 guests. In July they
moved into a house they had boughtnear Welshpool. Alastair’s mother
made four bridesmaid dresses and a
waistcoat for him out of Antarctic
tartan. Ros’s two older sisters helped
her to get ready. Although she was
only yards from the ceremony, she
still managed to be 15 minutes late.
She walked up the aisle with her
father to The Cinematic Orchestra’s
Arrival of the Birds, played by
Alastair’s younger sister on the piano
and Ros’s mother on the violin.
Ros’s sister’s partner played the
Beatles’ Blackbird on guitar during a
period of reflection. There was a chair
set out for Alastair’s father with his
binoculars and a teddy bear wearing
an Antarctic tartan waistcoat. A
buzzard had circled at his funeral,
and, as the ceremony started under
the tree, one circled the tree.
After champagne in the garden, the
wedding party processed through the
fields and woodland to a nearby
Methodist chapel, which was funded
by Ros’s paternal great-grandfather.
Alastair’s mother had made tartan
facemasks for the congregation.
Lunch was served under a marquee.
Alastair had fashioned tables out of a
tree that had recently been cut down.
His sister made the cake in the shape
of Skomer, topped with two
albatrosses (one in a veil) displaying
to one another. There were games on
the lawn and an evening BBQ.
By 9pm the newlyweds said their
goodbyes. Alastair’s sister and nieces
had decorated their car with tin cans.
Ros had thought they were heading
home but Alastair had booked a night
at a hotel. “We’re two peas in a pod,”
she says. “We don’t really do things
the way you’re meant to.”If you would like to feature a
wedding or engagement or the
birth of a child on these pages, call020 7782 5583, Mon-Fri, to discuss
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Ros was in her element as an
ornithologist working as a researcher
on Skomer Island off the coast of
Pembrokeshire on the lookout for
puffins and Manx shearwaters. Yet it
was a sighting in the library that
changed her life.
“It’s always good to meet a fellow
ginger,” says Ros. Alastair was on the
720-acre island to monitor guillemots
and other species with the Wildlife
Trust of South and West Wales. She
was there to study survival rates.
They immediately got chatting.
“We think the same,” she says. “He’s
wonderfully straightforward.” Both
went to Bangor University but 11 years
apart. They love being surrounded by
nature and the calm of the outdoors.
She is a licensed cannon-netter. He is
a keen photographer.
They looked forward to working on
the same study site and sharing
observations. Their relationship was
in its early stages when they returned
to the mainland after four months in
- “When you meet someone on
an island, it’s not necessarily the same
in the crazy, fast-paced world,” says
Alastair. Another pressure was his
impending trip to Bird Island off the
coast of South Georgia to study
macaroni penguins for 18 months
with the British Antarctic Survey. As
the great-great-nephew of the polar
explorer and artist, Edward Wilson,
who died as part of Scott’s team
returning from the South Pole, it was
a “dream job”.
They had a brief period together on
the mainland before Alastair’s trip.
On the day of his departure, Ros
surprised him by turning up at his
parents’ house in southwest Wales to
wave him off with his father at the
train station.
They kept in daily contact via
WhatsApp and would speak once a
week. “It was nice to have someone to
talk to when stressful things
happened,” says Alastair, whose small
team were the island’s only human
inhabitants. Ros and his mother were
there to greet him on his return into
RAF Brize Norton. “It felt like we were
a solid couple by that time,” she says.
In 2016, they went on a joint
project to New Zealand to monitor
black-fronted terns. They had
planned to go travelling afterwards
but Alastair flew home early when his
father had pancreatic cancer
diagnosed. He took a job as an
Marriages and engagements
Love at first sighting for ornithologist
environment officer for Natural
Resources Wales so he could be close
by. Ros got a job with the British
Trust for Ornithology, based in
Thetford, in Norfolk, where she is
now a research ecologist. The couple
would meet at weekends at her family
home in Shropshire. Alastair’s father
died in 2017.
The following year, they went to
Rome, where Alastair raised the
subject of marriage. “He was checking
to see if I would say ‘yes’,” she says.
The following month, they spent aRos and Alastair’s ceremony was held under an oak tree in her family garden.
Their cake was in the shape of Skomer Island and topped with two albatrossesNew readers
The first thing
people say when
they see Sienna
is, “her hair is
amazing”.
“She was born
with a lot of it,”
says Sonia,
whose daughter
arrived weighing
7lb 3oz, one day after Christopher’s
birthday. It was Sonia who thought of
the name Sienna; they had also
considered the name Arya but
decided it might become too popular
because of the character Arya Stark
in Game of Thrones.
Sienna’s parents’ main wish for her
is that she will be “a down to earth,
really open person”. Sonia, an English
teacher, naturally also hopes that
Sienna enjoys reading. “She has a big
library already of books that she’s
been gifted. At the moment she likes
anything that is colourful and bright
— she loves the pictures in Giraffes
Can’t Dance.”Rowan has a
rather impressive
collection of
dungarees.
“Everyone has
been buying her
them so that she
can dress like me:
it’s a bit of a thing
that I always
wear dungarees,” says Steph, whose
daughter also seems to take after her
in the chilled stakes. She and Paul
chose the name Rowan for their
first child because they wanted
“something a bit different” for a girl
and liked its nature connotation. As
for middle names, “My great-
grandmother is Rosie and my
grandmother is Jean,” says Steph.
Rowan’s parents are looking
forward to taking her to Wales to visit
her aunt Marion and her uncle Matt,
who is responsible for her favourite
toy, a bear called Rogan. Steph hopes
that Rowan will be a strong swimmer,
while Paul has his heart set on her
playing rugby.Ros Green, 28, an ornithologist, and
Alastair Wilson, 39, an ecologist,
were married on August 15, 2020, at
Ros’s family home in Maesbrook,
Shropshire
Rowan Rosie Jean Coombes was
born on May 23, 2020, at Stoke
Mandeville Hospital in Aylesbury to
Stephanie Chick, 36, and Paul
Coombes, 37Sienna Rose Kumar-Head was born
on March 30, 2020, at Wexham Park
Hospital in Slough to Sonia Kumar,
35, and Christopher Head, 38WlhpoolAlastair’smother
IAN GARFIELDReaders’
Lives
‘He knows how to
make me laugh’
CRAIG NIVEN, 33, A SPORTS CONSULTANT, AND
SARAH ASHDOWN, 29, A MARKETING EXECUTIVE,WERE MARRIED ON JUNE 9, 2018,
AT ODO’S BARN IN BILSINGTON, KENTTHEIR WEDDING WAS FEATURED IN
THE TIMES ON AUGUST 4, 2018
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