A FARMER who paid for his new house with a shoe-box full of cash, and a show home cleared from top to bottom by burglars, are just two of the many memories of Forest man Colin O'Dell.

Mr O'Dell, who lives at Coleford, has celebrated 30 years with top regional building company Westbury. He recounted the incidents at a reception to mark the occasion and at which he was presented with an inscribed desk pen set and a bottle of malt whiskey.

Mr O'Dell, now the company's regional building director, started with the Westbury company, then owned by the Joiner family, as a site engineer.

His area was the Forest as well as Chepstow and Monmouth.

"In those early days it was all very much hands on. I was in and out of trenches, marking up the plots and the like. It's all very different now, of course – at least most of the time it is – and all in all it's been a busy 30 years," he said.

His two lasting memories were the arrival of a farmer to pay for a house with a shoe-box full of cash and arriving at a smartly furnished show home to find it had been completely emptied of everything but the curtains.

Mr O'Dell and his wife Diane live at Coleford and have two adult sons.

He is a former captain of the Forest of Dean Golf Club and has an eye of retirement in two or three years when he can play more golf and indulge his passion for salmon fishing.