Happy Anniversary!

I met the husband thirty years ago today. He was a friend of my brother, and we were at a party we were both invited to. We were very young.

Thirty years ought to feel like a very long time, but time is funny stuff that does weird, elastic, concertina things that never cease to freak me out.

The last fifteen years have gone so fast it feels as if there's hardly been time to take a breath.  The ten before that not so much. The first five years almost seem to be writ larger in my memory than the other twenty-five put together.

I still find the husband funny, clever, charming, sexy and all sorts of other things, just as I did when first we met.

I don’t believe in psychic stuff and ghosts and soul-mates and hocus-pocus, but when I first set eyes on the husband he was glowing. If you remember the old ready-brek advert from the late 70s or early 80s (you know the one with the tag-line ‘central heating for kids’), well, he looked like the boy in that. He had a great, yellowish light all around him, like a halo, only bigger. Some people might call it an aura. 


I was sucked in, and I stayed sucked in.

When we began, our relationship was very simple: we liked each other, and there was a huge attraction. We did what kids do; we spent time together with our families and friends, and lived a very easy, very happy existence without the pressures of adulthood. It was heavenly, but, at least after the first year or so, we also took it pretty seriously. 

Over time, a lot of time, our relationship has become like a very complex dance. We still like each other and there is still a huge attraction, but there are other things, now, too. There is work and family and a home; there are financial pressures and domestic considerations; there has been the better and the less good, there has been sickness, and there has been richer and less well off. 

We are, above all, compatible. Our personalities, our individual strengths and weaknesses, dovetail together in the neatest, most satisfying of ways. It is, as far as we are concerned, perfect. I wish everyone could say the same.

What’s more, we’re just about young enough to hope that we might manage another thirty years.

To which I can only say, Crikey! And, of course, Huzzah!