I took early retirement after my first wife’s untimely death in 1993. Looking for something to do I was struck by television programmes depicting the plight of children in the Romanian orphanages. I soon managed to join a convoy from the Ashbourne area taking medical and other aid to Romania. We had an unnerving experience when we arrived at the border as the border guards came and collected all our documents and passports and walked off. They returned about three-quartes of an hour later and said NO and turned and walked off again. We eventually found out that our papers did not have the necessary stamps on them. We managed to contact our receiving charity and they came to the border, took our papers and returned about an hour later with them stamped. By then the guards had changed so we had to go through the whole procedure again. At last we were in and I soon knew why I had come, so much so that I went back four more times and made many friends there, but that’s another story.
