Working ‘nine to five’ is quite long enough for most of us.

For couples like Vyv and Chris Waters, who take charge of a village shop selling newspapers, a working day is more like 6 to 8 - and retirement is likely to come as a quite a shock to the system.

The Waters have decided to call it a day after running Gilwern’s Dell Stores for the past four and a half years, during which time Vyv says they’ve succeeded in ‘turning it into the centre of the community again’.

Vyv’s association with the stores actually goes back fifty years, when he used to make deliveries there.

“We’ll miss it because we know about 75 per cent of the people that come in here by their Christian names,” he said. “We also get a lot of passing trade - people on their way to and from holidays in West Wales.

“But we’re retiring in the village so we’ll still see our old customers - and it will be nice having some time off. We’ve always opened seven days a week from 6am to 8pm and our only day off all year has been Christmas Day!”