How Pauline Swaine swapped Meltham for new life and a new man in Caribbean

Jul 1 2009 by John Avison, Huddersfield Daily Examiner

HOW many people’s dream life would be to spend the day fishing in the ocean off Barbados while converting a beach house into a bar and restaurant?

It sounds perfect but, like everything in life, it has had its troubles.

“Only you can make your dreams come true, and they don’t happen without a lot of sleepless nights,” says Pauline Swaine, originally of Meltham.

Pauline traces her dissatisfaction with life in Britain to 1990, Margaret Thatcher, high interest rates and the poll tax.

She sold her house in Meltham and bought a round-the-world ticket. She got half way, got a bad case of salmonella poisoning in Australia and returned the way she came, via America.

Back in Huddersfield she got a job as an On the Move lottery rep for Huddersfield Town, but decided after a while that it would be good to own a pub.

So she bought the Railway, Berry Brow and met and married her first husband, Michael.

“Then I became seriously ill and spent almost three years in and out of hospital,” said Pauline.

“We came out of the pub not in a good financial state, in 1997 I think. In 2005, Michael I separated on mutual understanding and are still good friends.

“Once I was well enough I got a job with a company selling IT software and travelled the country doing trade shows and shopping centres.”

This didn’t work out and she came back in, with present manager Karen Haigh, on the On The Move team at a relaunch of the lottery in 2005.

At about this time, and having been to Barbados on short holidays three times before, Pauline was once again seduced by the palm-strewn beaches of the Caribbean.

“A holiday was on the agenda so I booked for one week to Barbados in February 2006.

Four weeks later I returned, for another fortnight. I had met a man and things were sweet (as they say here).”

But the wolf still had to be kept from the door and she got a tele-sales job in Leeds.

“I hated it. The M62, the job, the weather, everything. So I booked another holiday to Barbados for two weeks in May.