It is our wedding anniversary.
We remembered this as a surprise over coffee in bed this morning, which was a nice way to start the day, and both of us said that we thought it was nice to be married to one another, and how much more fun it would be if only we were getting married now instead of all those years ago when we didn’t know one another at all.
It would be splendid to get married to each other again years after the first time, to have all the niceness of the big party and the pretty dresses and the flowers, except that now we could really enjoy it because of being best friends and not just people who barely know one another’s names.
Also I would like another honeymoon because the first one was lovely, we spent it at the Savoy in London and went to see a splendid dance show called Stomp at the theatre. If I win the lottery, which I never will because of not doing it, we could have another honeymoon.
We did not celebrate with another honeymoon today, because we would need to win the lottery first, which we haven’t. We spent the day making some home-made flea spray for the dogs and knocking the nails out of some tiresome planks that Mark has been saving in an irritating heap in the garden.
I messed up the flea spray by getting distracted and it boiled dry, leaving a horrible black crust in the bottom of the pan, and a nasty smell. Mark cleaned it for me as a kindly thing later on, for which I was very grateful, what a good thing I married him.
I was also grateful for not having a garden full of planks any more, he is going to take them over to the allotment and build some flower beds, which will be nice, although we are both having guilt pangs about the allotment on account of not having been near it for absolutely ages, we will have to organise our lives a bit better if we are to grow prize-winning pumpkins this year.
The sun shone, so I hung the sheets out on the line to dry, which is always nice, I like the smell when they have dried in the garden: and after that got on with some sensible but dreadfully expensive administrative things, like taxing the car and taking Lucy to the optician again.
In the end we went to work and also had a fairly hasty swim in the still-very-cold swimming pool. We stayed at work until Lucy finished working at the Chinese restaurant, and then we all came home together.
We had a family party then, in the middle of the night together. We opened some lovely champagne which we turned into a cocktail with some French raspberry aperitif and some strawberries in, and Oliver had with orange juice as Buck’s Fizz.
We had a lovely party, very giggly and happy, and I told the children stories of Number Two Daughter’s childhood, when we were terribly poor, and had to try and keep the house warm with scary paraffin heaters and had to eat lentils and stinging nettles, which sounds funny now but probably wasn’t at the time. Nettles are good to eat when they are young and fresh, because they have got lots of iron in them, which is a handy thing when you are very poor, but even then they are not exactly delicious, and lentils are never all right to eat no matter what you do with them.
We are not poor now, which is wonderful. Number Two daughter has given us an anniversary present of a massage at the WellPerson Loveliness Holistic OrganicBeing Health Spa and we have added our own anniversary present to that of a glass of champagne, and we are going to go and do it one day later on this month, probably after the children have gone back to school.
It is lovely to have a wedding anniversary and to think that we have been happy together for so long. It is lovelier still to have such a nice family, with all their rascally carryings on.
I am very contented with my fortunate world.
The picture was taken by our friend Tommy who is an ace photographer: if you think you would like some photographs taken then he is a good chap. He took loads and did not once cut the top of our heads off or make us look blurry, and also made us feel not at all embarrassed about being in the middle of Nottingham with no clothes on.
