SAGA Magazine
How one lady’s story had a happy ending
Julia Ramsden’s story also has a happy ending, although the route she took was a great deal more expensive. She had been widowed for six years and her loneliness was beginning to spill into misery, when her friend recommended The County Register, an agency founded by Heather Heber-Percy to cater specifically for older singles.
Heber-Percy’s services do not come cheap. For £1,000, clients – most of them aged between 50 and 80 – are included in her portfolio. This huge tome contains biographies of around 1,000 people from across Britain and a few from Europe, all of whom have been obliged to pass muster during a 90 minute interview. On top of this, she offers a ‘headhunting’ service for her clients. For the princely sum of £8,400, she will place a detailed advertisement describing her client and the sort of man she’s looking for in several quality newspapers.
Ramsden reasoned that, although the price was high, £8,400 was probably a sound investment in her future. Last Christmas, she reached her lowest ebb and, looking back, she says she clung to survival by poring through the portfolio with her two daughters. Lo and behold, in January – over afternoon tea at a hotel – she met a man who has changed her life. ‘I knew at once that I wanted to see him again, and that was mutual. It just felt as though it was meant.’ Within months she had sold her house and moved 300 miles across the country to live with him.
SAGA Magazine
How one lady’s story had a happy ending
Julia Ramsden’s story also has a happy ending, although the route she took was a great deal more expensive. She had been widowed for six years and her loneliness was beginning to spill into misery, when her friend recommended The County Register, an agency founded by Heather Heber-Percy to cater specifically for older singles.
Heber-Percy’s services do not come cheap. For £1,000, clients – most of them aged between 50 and 80 – are included in her portfolio. This huge tome contains biographies of around 1,000 people from across Britain and a few from Europe, all of whom have been obliged to pass muster during a 90 minute interview. On top of this, she offers a ‘headhunting’ service for her clients. For the princely sum of £8,400, she will place a detailed advertisement describing her client and the sort of man she’s looking for in several quality newspapers.
Ramsden reasoned that, although the price was high, £8,400 was probably a sound investment in her future. Last Christmas, she reached her lowest ebb and, looking back, she says she clung to survival by poring through the portfolio with her two daughters. Lo and behold, in January – over afternoon tea at a hotel – she met a man who has changed her life. ‘I knew at once that I wanted to see him again, and that was mutual. It just felt as though it was meant.’ Within months she had sold her house and moved 300 miles across the country to live with him.