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A match made over mass

Claudia saw James over a pile of waste while they were working in a hotel in Germany but their first date was in a church, says Andrea Smith

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By Andrea Smith
Sunday Sep 20 2009

'SHE slept her way to the bottom," jokes James Reeves, who was working as a kitchen porter in a hotel in Germany when he fell in love with his wife Claudia. She was a trainee manager at the same Sheraton hotel, and it's clear that her style of management in James's case was a very inclusive one!

The year was 1991, and James had just graduated from NUI, Galway, then known as UCG. He found it difficult to get a job, so had left his home in Athy to spend a few months in Germany.

Claudia Cabral-Lopes was born in Angola, grew up in Faro, Portugal, and was planning to pursue a career in hotel management. As she loves the sun, she was hoping then to move on to work in a hotel in a hot country. So how she ended up living here is a testament to her love for James. She recalls feeling sorry for him at first, when she saw him standing in the middle of all the recycling waste at the hotel, and thought he looked "quite cool" sorting it all out.

Then they met at a staff dinner party, and liked each other immediately.

"I was only 22, and wasn't looking for a wife," says James. "The moment I saw Claudia though, I had a strange feeling that she was the woman I would marry."

And as Claudia's faith is important to her, what clinched it was when James mentioned that he would be going to mass the next morning. So they essentially had their first date in a church, and went out for a pizza afterwards.

The relationship was going strong, when James moved back home a few months later to seek a proper job. The pair kept up a long-distance relationship throughout the following year, and Claudia regularly queued up in the snow to call James from a payphone. Then she decided to join him here, and sacrificed her Caribbean plans for the attractions of Athy.

She loves Ireland, she says, but misses her family at home in Portugal. She has four sisters, the youngest of whom, Alice, was born the day before she set off for the hotel in Germany.

Claudia got a job here as a bilingual secretary, and threw herself into making friends through the Ireland-Portugal society. She subsequently taught Portuguese classes, worked for the Portuguese Tourism Board, and was deputy department head at the K-Club.

After a couple of different jobs, James did his higher diploma in education at Maynooth, and started teaching. He now teaches business and religion part-time at Ardscoil na Trionoide.

He and Claudia were married in September 1995, and have five children, Beatrice, 12, Sarah, 10, Alexandra, 7, Philippa, 5, and Patrick, 1.

"James is loving and romantic and he's much calmer than I am," says Claudia. "We enjoy each other's company very much. Our salvation is making time for ourselves, even if it's over a glass of red wine while watching The Sopranos."

James says that Claudia is full of life, and describes her as being "electric". She's excellent at buying thoughtful presents, while he, alas, has produced a few duds in the past.

"He bought me a hot-water bottle one Christmas," laughs Claudia, adding that her present to him was a hi-fi system that he wanted. In his defence, James says that they had agreed to buy token presents as they were putting the money towards a good camera between them. And Claudia often complained of the cold.

If five children and a part-time teaching job aren't enough to keep them busy, the Reeves also have three small businesses. One wonders where they find the energy to keep it all running smoothly, but they say it's achieved through "organised chaos".

First, there's Claudia's tableware rental company, The Plate Lady, which hires out delph, cutlery, serving equipment and glassware for special occasions and corporate functions (www. platelady.com).

They also run a small farm, and have a self-catering cottage on the grounds that they renovated themselves and rent out to visitors. And thirdly, James has just launched a new student newspaper, called the Irish Student Press.

As a teacher, he always encouraged his students to read a quality paper, but felt there was a gap for one in which the articles were contextualised for students. He decided to start up his own paper, tailoring the writing to the reading age of senior cycle pupils.

Ten thousand copies of the first issue went out to schools in January, and the reaction was extremely positive.

One advantage is that it's completely free to schools, as it's funded by its advertisers. The benefit for them is that secondary school students are a demographic that they often find difficult to reach.

Some of the paper's articles are written by students, and others by established journalists. It will be going into schools on a monthly basis from now on, with an expected print run of 50,000 copies.

"It can be manic with all we have going on sometimes, but it's very exciting and rewarding," says Claudia.

She feels that James is visionary in his approach to life, and admires the way he always does right by everyone.

Even aside from family and the work, the couple have always been very active in the community. James set up a rowing club and was its chairman for 10 years. And Claudia is co-founder of Ladybirds, a local parent and toddler group. When it began, it transpired that 95 per cent of the mothers were from different parts of the world, and had married men from Athy. It became a great social outlet for these women, to the extent that James renamed it, the "Mothers Without Toddlers" group.

"Claudia and I are always full of ideas, which we love to bounce off one another," says James. "The challenges of our married life are trying to keep our sanity, and making a living out of what we enjoy, while staying at home with our family as much as possible. It has to be heaven."

For further information on the Irish Student Press, visit www.studentpress.ie

- Andrea Smith