Blooming brilliant 40 years for florist

Linda Taylor, who is also celebrating her 60th birthday, opened her shop, Flowers by Salindra, 40 years ago.

She said: “It was something my friend Sandra Moylan and I wanted to do.

“We called it after a mix of our names.”

Flowers by Salindra opened in Market Street, Heckmondwike, and 18 years ago moved to its current premises on the opposite side of the road.

Linda said: “Apart from sweeping up when my sister was a hairdresser, and delivering newspapers, this is the only job I’ve had. I don’t know what else I would have done.”

Sandra left the business 20 years ago and now Linda runs it with her daughter Laura, and shop assistant, also called Laura, who came on work experience.

Looking back, Linda said she remembered one Mother’s Day when the shop ran out of flowers because they also had four weddings to cater for – as well as making posies for a dance school show.

She said: “We didn’t go to bed – we worked all through the night!”

She said she had seen many different fashions over the years, and was now doing flowers for brides whose mothers had come to her for their own wedding bouquets.

She said: “We have a chap who buys his wife a single red rose every Friday. It is very romantic.

“It has been hard work but I like it.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t!”