• 11/8/2007
  • United Kingdom
  • Emily Walker
  • SwintonAdvertiser (www.thisisswindon.co.uk)

Most men would be delighted to hear that their wife will never speak again, but it does not stop Bob Taylor’s wife nagging him.

Lorry driver Bob, 54, fell in love with Rita, 49, across a busy nightclub dance floor a year after the care worker was diagnosed with cancer and had to have her tongue removed.

Bob was in the Cardiff bar after driving to the Welsh city in December 2004 from his home in Swindon and said Rita silently captured his heart.

“I think it was the physical attraction to start with,” said Bob.

“We smiled at each other across the room.

“Then I went over and tried to chat her up but she didn’t say anything so I said You don’t say much, do you?’ “Then her friend told me she couldn’t talk because she had tongue cancer.

“The fact that she couldn’t talk didn’t stop us getting to know each other, because we did most of the talking on her notepad.

“After that night, we started texting each other. Then when I got home from work in the evenings we would email.

“By Christmas she came to stay with me in Swindon.”

Bob gave up his job and moved to Cardiff to look after Rita and set up his graffiti and chewing gum cleaning company called Grime Blasters.

Then last August Rita made her silent “I do” to Bob when they got married.

“I lip-read Rita saying she would marry me. It was a bit tricky learning to lip-read to start with, but I’ve got used to it now and can understand pretty much everything she says. And if we get stuck she can write it down.

“I can lip-read her nagging at me too. Having a wife who can’t speak doesn’t stop me from getting nagged. I don’t get any special treatment on that side of things.

“For someone who can’t talk she never shuts up.”

Rita was diagnosed with cancer in 2003, just weeks after her father John Steele died from cancer of the windpipe.

“Dad’s death left me devastated,” said Rita, who communicated through her husband.

“So when I got a sore throat, I assumed I was just rundown and went to see the GP.

“When it didn’t clear up, I had blood tests and a chest X-ray before being referred to hospital for more tests.

“When I was told by my consultant that they’d found a large lump on the base of my tongue, and it was cancer, it felt as if I’d stepped in to the path of a 10-tonne truck.

“I wondered how I was going to prepare myself for a life without speech.

“I’d long been the life and soul of the party.

“Getting married was something I thought I would never do after the cancer. But Bob’s chat-up line was the perfect ice-breaker. “I thought it was so funny.”