The Mediterranean islands are heaven for dreamers who, like fictional character Shirley Valentine, long to chuck in their life at home and make a new one in the sun. Graham and Margaret Cockroft took a leap into the unknown when they headed for Cyprus six years ago - but they now live 3,000 miles apart after he set up an international property and holiday business in Saltaire and she runs the Cyprus end of the operation. Graham tells Jan Winter why they left everything behind to create a new life, and how their marriage survives the separation

WHEN GRAHAM returns to the Cyprus home he and wife Margaret set up, he now feels he's a guest.

He has spent 11 months in Britain taking "time out" of the marriage to set up the Cymply Cyprus business.

And Margaret trusts Graham to work as hard as possible to get the business going while he knows she is occupied at the Cyprus end. "This is what marriage is all about," he says.

The couple left for the island in 1992 after Graham's 15-year-old double glazing business had to close to make way for the proposed Aire Valley trunk road.

They had never even been to Cyprus. "I'd been to other Mediterranean countries and Margaret likes the sun. We went out there with no jobs but I'm an Aries, and they do things and then figure out how to get out of it. So we were there and started to figure out a way to earn a bob or two," says Graham, 52.

He became involved in a double glazing project which didn't work out, and by chance he and Margaret, 50, started to dabble with holiday letting and property sales.

"These Shirley Valentine situations aren't all they're cracked up to be. It becomes a drag! When one is under pension age you want to work. After three months of having an extended holiday I needed to work, financially and for my own satisfaction."

At a property fair, after Graham and Margaret had started to run their own property business, he met a businessman who had an Internet site, and Graham got hooked on the idea of displaying his business on the Internet.

The business arranging sales of homes in Cyprus as well as holiday lets is now run almost entirely via the Internet, and the opening of a shop in Saltaire high street is a display window to promote Cyprus and what it has to offer.

"In August 1997 I said to Margaret when the financial alarm bells started to ring that we needed a different way of life and another income, and I would be forced to go back to the UK to work. Margaret wasn't very pleased but things weren't going well financially," says Graham.

His aim is to work hard to build up a nest egg for his retirement and to set up a business which can be left in the hands of a manager so he can return to Cyprus for long periods.

He looked in the south of England for premises but decided to return to Yorkshire because his mother was ill in a nursing home in Ilkley. Both she and Graham's father have died this year - something which he has had to cope with alone.

But he and Margaret speak by telephone every day. A Vidal Sassoon-trained hairdresser, she suffers with back problems which can leave her in a lot of pain. But the weather in Cyprus is healthier for her and that keeps her there.

The couple married in 1985. Graham says: "The relationship between us isn't the same as it was at Christmas because I'm more of a guest. It's her home rather than mine. This has led to some tension but we have to adjust to that. Hopefully next year I'll be back there."

He works long hours, including weekends, and can take telephone inquiries at any hour of the day or night from people all over the world who have been looking at his web site.

"Who would retire in England where there's two months of summer and ten months of intolerable weather, when for half the money they can go to Cyprus and have 340 days of sunshine a year? And the pension can be drawn in Cyprus without British tax being taken off it."

Graham says he is a workaholic whose "leisure" time is now spent playing on the Internet!

"I'm a holiday agent who has been there, seen it and done that. Travel agents haven't been there and don't know the product. With my firm, people stay in houses owned by British ex-pats. I find the cheapest holiday flight on the Internet and they book it themselves, and my wife picks them up at the airport. They arrive to a welcome pack and a stocked-up fridge.

"I've been self-employed since 1976 and we've had to make a living, and it's not easy. We survive off our wits."

Graham has been back to Cyprus five times this year and although he is sometimes lonely, he believes this time is a worthwhile investment for both himself and Margaret.

l Graham can be contacted on the Internet on www.europropertynet.com or www.CymplyCyprus.com.

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