marriage

The most romantic thing you can do: Be kind

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20160910_133428As I unpacked the box of Imodium from my weekend bag I thought – Well, that wasn’t supposed to happen.

I organised every element of our third wedding anniversary getaway. I chose the destination – Whitstable and then Margate – I found the hotels, I booked the restaurants, I packed a dress that was going to require ironing before I wore it – the very definition of ‘putting the effort in’ – and put everything in place for the perfect mini-break.

But there are some things that you just can’t plan for, and food poisoning is one of them. Yes, on Thursday afternoon, the bloated feeling I hoped was just down to excessive cheese consumption turned into more quality time with our hotel bathroom than I would wish on anyone. To say this food didn’t agree with me would be an understatement. This was the Brexit to my Remain – it wanted to leave and it wanted to leave right NOW. And as much as I can try and joke about it, I was gutted. I’d been looking forward to this trip for weeks and to lose a third of it to sickness was just very annoying.

When you’ve been together a long time, you start to feel like you need to book in time to be romantic. You schedule hours, days and weekends during which to be your best selves – to watch sunsets, to sip cocktails, to eat dinner without the telly on. To pay the other person your fullest attention and remind them that you really do love them more than your phone/X-Box/cat.

But as wonderful as that kind of organisation can be – and it really can – things don’t always go to plan. And what matters is how you deal with that.

Leon has a lot of experience in this area as I have been accidentally unwell on numerous profoundly inconvenient occasions. It happened on our honeymoon when a dodgy plate of rice caused me to get as close as a human being can to exploding, it happened last year in Malta when I stupidly forgot to drink water in 34 degree heat and discovered just how well a body responds to that (not well, not well at all), and it happened right here in our house when the first oyster I ever consumed ensured that it would also be my last.

Charlotte and Leon Buxton wedding dayHis response is always the same – concern, a couple of gentle reminders that freaking out will only worsen my predicament, and then relentless (slightly irritating at the time, totally wise and sensible in retrospect) instructions to drink copious amounts of water to ensure my continued survival. He then amuses himself doing whatever he likes until I improve. He doesn’t get cross that I ruined the holiday or start asking me for an approximate time at which I’ll be ready to hit the gin again, he just offers quiet reassurance that I’ll be back on the Pringles before I know it and that he’ll be there to peel off the lid. And for that I will always be grateful.

Romance doesn’t always look how you think it will. They don’t tell you when you take your vows that at some point in your life the words “I bought the rehydration sachets you asked for” will be the most romantic sentence you’ve ever heard, but it will, believe me, particularly if your stomach is as weak as mine.

Being romantic isn’t all about buying candlelit dinners and cocktails, although I do recommend a health dose of both. It’s the little acts of kindness that show you care – the text to say ‘Good luck’ before a tricky day, the reassuring hand squeeze across a train carriage table that promises everything will be fine, or the early morning walk into town to buy raspberry flavoured salt replacement solutions that will gradually bring your patient back to life. They may not make it into the photo album, but these are the moments you’ll remember.

This anniversary may not have quite gone to plan but we certainly won’t be forgetting it in a hurry. Not only did it teach us to always choose a hotel that’s near a Boots, but it also reminded us that if we’re kind to each other, we can handle anything. And that’s something I’m up for celebrating every year.

It’s a shame that we missed out on the dinner I had planned and that we didn’t get to see another sunset together, but I can only hope there will be plenty more to come.

And on the plus side, I never did have to iron that dress. Every cloud has a silver lining, you know.

Love your imperfections and someone else will love them too

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Sponsored post for Match.com

IMG_7499Years ago a man I liked took one look at my double jointed elbows and ran away because they made him feel sick.

I wasn’t expecting that, and clearly neither was he.

Both my arms bend further than your average limb – ‘hyperextension’ is the formal term, for the scientists amongst you. It actually means I’m extra flexible which is pretty cool and useful should you happen to drop your keys or wallet down the back of a radiator, but this guy clearly hadn’t done his research.

But never mind, it clearly wasn’t meant to be. Me and my bendy arms are very much a package deal and if you don’t like them, I’m going to have to leave you to retrieve your lost belongings by yourself.

But I must admit this little episode did make me a bit nervous. There’s already enough to consider when you’re trying to meet somebody – the cleanliness of your hair, the smoothness of your skin, the careful planning involved with arriving precisely on time for a date so as not to look too eager or aloof…

You can’t be worrying about what people are going to think of all the little quirks and imperfections that make up who you are as well. They’re just part of the deal, and the right person will like them. I mean, they’ll have to, you can’t change into somebody else.

Without quirks we’d all be super dull. I cry when I laugh – and I don’t mean just a few tears, I mean like I’ve just been told that my guinea pig has died – but I wouldn’t change it. Sure, I’ve had to spend a disproportionate amount of money on tissues and mascara over the years but it’s my thing. And at least you know when I like your jokes.

You have to be comfortable with who you are and to enter into relationships as the real you – and to find somebody who wants you to do just that.

I showed my husband my funny elbows on our very first date. A bit forward, I know, but I decided we should put our vomit-inducing cards on the table early doors to save wasting anybody’s time.

He didn’t care at all. He laughed and held out his hand. It turns out one of his fingers bends the wrong way at the joint. I don’t think I’ve ever been so happy.

Relationships aren’t about meeting somebody perfect, they’re about meeting somebody perfect for you. No matter how many traits and idiosyncrasies you bring to the party, the other person will have just as many. Sure, there might need to be a bit of compromising down the line if your imperfections include a penchant for depositing dirty socks around the house, or finishing your wife’s favourite ice cream and leaving the empty container in the freezer (just a couple of completely random examples I happened to think up…) but there’s plenty of time for that.

For now it’s about being proudly and unashamedly you. In my experience, anyone who wants you to be anything else simply isn’t worth the chase.

Love your imperfections and find someone else who loves them too with Match.com

For more dating and relationship tips, visit Match’s advice site.

Women, toilets, and a lifetime of “What ifs”

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IMG_7663What if I go to a restaurant where men and women have to use the same toilet and a man notices that I’ve been in the loo for longer than five seconds and then he tells all the other men and I end up alone.

What if drinking five Malibu and cranberry juices on our first date makes me need to go to the bathroom every 20 minutes and my future husband finds out sooner than glossy magazines would recommend that I am in fact a human being and not a poster that can talk.

What if we go for a walk in the countryside and I’m too scared to go to the loo in the bushes in case one of the ants has a camera phone and the whole thing goes viral.

What if I go for a job interview and I need to go to the toilet when I arrive because nerves and then the interviewer shakes my hand whilst it’s still damp and I wonder if I should send an email afterwards to clarify what happened.

What if I go to a rainforest in Australia and my husband tells me not to sit down on the only available toilet because there are ants all over the seat and I add ‘warnings about potential butt bites’ to the list of conversations nobody ever mentions that you’ll have once you’re married.

What if every time we come back from a holiday I feel the need to say how nice it is to be reunited with your own loo and my husband adds that to the list of conversations he wishes weren’t a part of being married.

What if people who are going to festivals are busy thinking about all the fun they’re going to have and the music they’re going to hear and the dancing they’re going to do and they don’t want to talk about how much time I would currently be dedicating to worrying about the toilet situation.

What if I go on a train and I think I’ve locked the toilet door but then all of a sudden it starts to open and there’s nothing I can do but sit there whilst I’m slowly revealed to the entire carriage.

What if they just leave me like that?

What if I go on a boat and there are no bathroom facilities whatsoever. Seriously, WHAT THEN.

What if I develop irritable bowel syndrome and when I eat pizza it makes me so ill that I end up lying in the foetal position on the bathroom floor, begging for forgiveness for whatever I did to deserve this. (Was it the floral leggings I wore in my youth? WAS IT?)

What if the story about the day I managed to master the art of hovering in order to use a chemical toilet isn’t a suitable response to the interview question “Tell me about the achievement that you’re most proud of.”

What if I go on a plane and I have to go to the toilet but the person in the seat at the end of my aisle is asleep and I’m too scared to wake them up so I try to climb over the top and I fall in their lap and they call the police and I get arrested whilst I’ve still got a full bladder.

What if I stay with a friend and their bathroom has a noisy fan light and every time I have to go to the loo in the night – which is loads because nothing makes you need to go like not wanting to go, am I right ladies? – I wake everybody up and they tell me to pack my things and get out of their house and out of their lives.

What if we all stopped worrying so much.

Would that help?

Holidays and learning to love coming home

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IMG_7635The worst thing about holidays is that they have to end.

I love being away until that part on your final day when you have to admit that you’re not on holiday any more, you’re just a long way from home.

I find it difficult when my welcome in the country or city I’ve chosen for a break suddenly feels like it’s running out. When you’re no longer a resident of your hotel or apartment, you’re dragging your belongings behind you on wheels, and somebody only has to whisper the word ‘passport’ for you to descend into a blind panic, scrabbling around in your bag for a desperate feel of your documents which are, of course, exactly where they were the last fifty times you checked.

We just got back from Budapest. Leon booked us a city break there for my birthday, which is definitely up there with the nicest things anyone has ever done for me. It was 37 degrees on Tuesday and 32 on Wednesday and every part of me felt like it had melted. I recommend only travelling to countries of this temperature with someone who loves you enough to overlook comments such as ‘Even my shoulders are sweating!’ which are really not in keeping with the romantic getaway vibe.

I love these precious times of the year when we get to go away and pretend that we’re the only two people in the world. When our only concern is where we’re going to go for our next Aperol Spritz or, in Hungary’s case, as many glasses of water as it takes to keep us upright. This isn’t real life by any means, it’s an escape from it, and we all need that from time to time.

When the time came for us to come back, I felt the usual combination of pre-flight angst (Could we accidentally go to the wrong airport? Will there be a big queue at the gate? What if somebody sighs when I ask them to move out of my way on the plane so that I can go to the toilet? Do they not realise that will just make me need to go again really really soon?) and post-holiday blues. Why can’t we stay forever, I wondered, as a woman wheeled a trolley filled with miniature shampoos, conditioners, and shower caps by our hotel room. This place has everything we need.

IMG_7656But rather than really feeling down about our trip being over – which would surely be the ultimate definition of a first world problem anyway – I decided to focus on the good parts of what we were coming back to. If we can’t be here, I thought, I want to be in London.

I said to a friend recently that the relief I feel every time I get back to London tells me for sure that this is where I’m supposed to live. She looked at me with surprise because most people feel the precise opposite way. They will say that the relief they feel when they get the hell out of London tells them that they should live LITERALLY ANYWHERE ELSE LONDON IS INSANE.

We are all entitled to our opinions. But for me this is the place, certainly for now anyway. I don’t mean Leicester Square or Oxford Street you understand, I’m not mad – I mean London in the broader sense. Its billions of opportunities. Its tube system that I like watching documentaries about. The little corner of this city that I call home.

Home is a hard status to achieve. For years after leaving my mum’s house, which was my home for 18 years, I didn’t give anywhere I lived that title. They were just a variety of buildings to which I hauled my complete Beatles CD collection and extensive range of shoes, and in which I slept but did not truly rest.

But with age and relationships and a little bit of cash to make places your own, home comes. I know that my flat is my home now because I fantasise about being in its bath when I’m out at social events. I know I belong in this house because I dedicate specific hours of the weekend to doing nothing but hang out in it. It’s earned the precious title of home because it’s the base to which my husband and I return each day to chat, to eat snacks, and to recover from having to interact with other human beings.

So yes, it is a shame to have to leave a hot, sunny holiday and to return to daily life. But what’s most important is that you like the life you’re returning to. Because if you don’t, there’s nothing like having to get on a plane and fly back into reality to make you realise it. And in that case, it’s time to make a change, my friend. Listen to your post-holiday head, that guy speaks the truth.

But if you do like it, don’t take that for granted. OK, nobody’s going to deliver free tiny bottles of body lotion to your bedroom tomorrow morning, but otherwise you’ve got it pretty good.

Want to restore your faith in humanity? Go to a wedding

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20160625_132441I didn’t think I was going to write anything today.

Ever since the news came on Friday morning that Britain had voted to leave the EU, I’ve been wandering around my house like a lost soul. I’ve been behaving like I’ve just been dumped – stress-eating chocolate, staring at the wall whilst hot water runs over my head in the shower, and feeling like every song I hear on the radio is about it, in some way. The world seemed so topsy-turvy that I thought “Sod it” and bought a punnet of ripen-at-home nectarines, despite the practically built-in assumption that they won’t ripen, they’ll just stay rock hard for two weeks, soften for an hour, and then turn green. As luck would have it, they’ve actually come up lovely and now sit on my kitchen unit as a little symbol of hope.

I didn’t think I’d blog today because I was worried that my usual subject matter – relationships, confidence, and generally trying to get around without falling over – would seem too trivial at a time of such uncertainty. And then I went to a wedding and realised that just isn’t true.

I sat in a church yesterday and watched two lovely people get married. I went to their reception and listened as the people they love said wonderful things about them. I heard about guests who had travelled to be there, I saw people who didn’t know each other making friends, and I cried – like I always do – as the groom told a room full of people how much he loves his wife.

It’s hard not to feel optimistic in this kind of setting. Because relationships are everything. They’re how we learn to care about other people. They teach us how much luck is involved with how somebody comes to be the person that they are. And they help us realise that without compassion, love and understanding, we’re going to end up alone.

Everybody you see at a wedding wants the best for the bride and groom. That’s why they’re there. It’s why they’ve given up a whole day for it, why they’ve got dressed up smartly, and why, in many cases, they’ve decided to wear heels for 12 hours straight. You don’t do something like that lightly.

We’re all capable of doing amazing things for the people we love. We don’t think twice about it – they’re part of us so we give them our time, our ears, and, if we’re feeling particularly generous, perhaps even one of our Percy Pigs.

And in my view, the world works best when we want the best for other people too – even if they’re not on our Christmas card list, or from around here. When we’re able to look beyond the people in our immediate lives and see human faces that deserve just as much safety and joy as everybody else.

I’m deeply concerned that such a huge amount of the propaganda and rhetoric being shared of late has positioned certain people and areas of society as ‘other’, as a problem to be removed. No good has ever come of such a viewpoint and I’m startled to see it spreading so far and wide.

I’ve always said that I don’t use this blog to talk about politics but, really, politics is just about people – together we decide what kind of world we want to live in. I consider myself to be an observer of people. I notice stuff and I write it down. And what I’m seeing horrifies me. Usually there’s a bit of humour in it but I’m struggling to find any of this funny, except in its absurdity.

So maybe talking about relationships isn’t so trivial after all. Because without them, what are we? Just individual people, living our lives and not giving a damn about anybody else? I’m no expert but I don’t think that is going to work.

I’m nervous about what is to come, what the future has in store. But for now I will hold on tight to the optimism I felt at yesterday’s wedding, and to the knowledge that love and unity will always win over division.

Solitude is good for you, loneliness is not

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IMG_7519No matter what I’m doing, where I am, or who I’m with, I’m always conscious of the next time that I’ll get to be on my own. It doesn’t matter how much fun I’m having, the knowledge is always there, like a security blanket I never thought I’d need.

For me, solitude is as important as breakfast. I need a strong dose of it everyday to help me stay upright. Partly because I have social anxiety, so get-togethers can be a bit exhausting, but also because I’m 30 years old and this is what it’s like to be a grown up – we love other people’s company but we enjoy our own just as much.

Sometimes I wonder if I look forward to a social interaction being over as much as I do the event itself. I feel a great sense of achievement when I’ve been out and had a great time – when I’ve been to a party and stopped noticing whether I’m enjoying it or not because I just am. I love coming home knowing I’ve done some seriously good socialising and then feeling free to enjoy a spot of solitude because I’ve earnt it.

Time alone hasn’t always felt so precious, though. I’ve written before about how we all have to learn to love our own company. When I was at university, my friend Emma and I would hang out – sometimes in lectures, often at her house, mostly in Primark – and then she’d disappear off for an afternoon nap to prepare for whatever evening activity we had planned. She needed a rest and some shut-eye before further fun could commence.

But I didn’t need this break. We still laugh now about how I’d say “If you need me, I’ll be at home, lying down with my eyes shut,” because I wanted to join in but I just couldn’t nap. (I still can’t, actually, unless I’ve had an alcoholic drink, in which case NIGHT NIGHT.) I didn’t know what to do with the time. I was bored on my own, I’d have to go and buy a magazine to entertain myself. I’d will the time away until somebody was free to come and play with me.

And yet now I crave that time. Modern life demands a lot from us. We work, we go out, and we’re all constantly in touch with each other via phones and emails and apps I sometimes wish had never been invented. If a colleague says they have no plans for the weekend, you can hear the office groan with envy at their freedom, everybody else’s diaries gasping for a gap to pop a wash on, do the weeding, or just lie down.

IMG_6523It’s hard to keep going non-stop for days on end. We need time when we don’t have to think about making the right facial expression or saying the right thing. A bit of space to think it all over, or to think about nothing; to be alive but hardly moving. I like to have a bath and do a face mask. I like to watch Friends episodes I’ve seen so many times that it feels like some of the storylines actually happened to me. And I like to go to bed without having to set an alarm because – for once – nobody is expecting me to be anywhere the next day.

I say all of this mindful that I can enjoy occasional solitude because it’s a treat, not a constant. I’m not lonely. Leon will be home again in a few hours, all being well. I have dates in the diary to see my friends and family soon which I’m looking forward to. Without these things it would be a different story. It is for so many people. The joy of solitude is not to be taken for granted because it’s only a pleasure when it’s a break from the norm.

The realisation hit me hard after we got married that even forever has an end point, that we’d signed up to be each other’s world and that we were relying on each other for company for the rest of our lives. I’ve had to force myself not to worry about it all the time, but I try to hold this knowledge close when I’m frustrated to find the fridge door has been left ajar, or that a world of grated cheese has mysteriously appeared on the kitchen worktop after somebody has come home from the pub. I try to think – what does it even matter? A love of cheese was all I ever wanted in a man. We can buy more. I’m just glad you’re home.

Like everything in life, it’s all about balance. I’ve spent today alone. I made a bacon sandwich and set the smoke alarm off. I listened to Hugh Bonneville’s Desert Island Discs and cried twice, as is standard for an episode of D.I.D. I saw for myself what it means when a cat starts digging a small hole in your back garden (no, it is not treasure they’re planning to bury). And I sat outside and wrote this.

But tomorrow I’ll be in company again and I wouldn’t have it any other way. What’s important is to know yourself well enough to build in what you need, and to try not to budge if anyone suggests that you do otherwise. You can feel it in your bones when you need a rest. Look in the mirror and your eyes will beg you not to leave the house, to stop just for a little while.

I am grateful for a life that is busy enough for a spot of alone time to feel like a treat. Like all luxuries, a life filled with solitude just wouldn’t be right, but a regular dose will do wonders for your health.

The biggest risk to your relationship right now: That you just can’t be arsed

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20151112_132817I know, I know – you’re tired.

If we didn’t have to go to work or cook food or do washing then we’d have all the energy in the world for fun and frivolity, 24 hours a day.

It’s why the start of relationships are so amazing. You don’t just eat, you have dinner out together in restaurants by candlelight. You don’t just cook, you make them a meal that features more than one course, more than one recipe book, and you leave the washing up until the morning. And you just don’t do laundry. You buy new clothes. You’re dating, you haven’t got time for fabric softener.

But long term relationships are different. You go from living separate lives that coincide on assigned dates and times for no other reason than to have fun, to sharing a home, where you learn how to live real life side by side.

And inevitably after years as a couple you don’t get to just conserve all of your energy for parties and date nights and giggling at how you each pronounce words. You have to live.

You have to do the weekly shop, clean the fridge, sort your post into piles: to file, to shred, to recycle, to return to sender for the billionth time – no, Mrs Richards does. not. live. here. To do all the things that make a house a home.

Rather than big romantic gestures, you show a daily interest. You talk about his day, you recount yours, you tackle the big questions of the week – what are you doing with your life? How much longer can you realistically live in this house? How long do you need to defrost mince before you can eat it? What does Google say? Does it smell alright?

And though this is all the most glorious fun in its own way, it can also make you unintentionally lazy. You can get so caught up in the day to day, and so knackered by it all, that if you’re not careful you forget to make some time just to enjoy yourselves.

I’m conscious all the time of getting too comfortable, of letting myself get away with just not being arsed to go outside because it’s cold and because we spent four years paying off this DFS sofa so shouldn’t I be allowed to sit on it?!

Of course, sometimes you just need to do nothing. Hell, I’m all in favour of diarising that. And there is nobody better to do nothing with than a person who loves you even though your ideal night in involves cheese puffs, stretchy trousers, and falling asleep in front of Coronation Street.

But other times, you need to get out there and give your relationship the attention it deserves. Go eat burgers, drink cocktails, see a film and chat about it all the way home. You’ll never regret the quality time you’ve spent together – only that you didn’t have more of it.

I’ve written this all down because it dawned on me this week how very sad it would be for my energy levels to be the reason why the best element of my life started to fail.

Because it would be so horribly ironic if the thing about which I feel the most enthused, the most passionate, and for which I would leave all of the washing up on the side forever if that’s what it took, (*shudders*) were to crumble because I couldn’t be arsed to put the effort in.

And because learning these things and then writing them down is exactly what blogs are for.

Every now and then we all need a little reminder to put our time into what really matters – because hey, guess what, whatever happens, the sofa will still be there for us when we get home.

I guess we’d all best pop our coats on then, hadn’t we?

 

Marriage, sometimes

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Sometimes he’ll accidentally throw a loo roll down the toilet and she won’t understand what…how did you… they’re so expens…just pop it in the bin.

Sometimes, a couple of days later, she’ll hurl a sock in the toilet instead of the laundry basket, and they’ll call it even.

Sometimes she’ll break her ‘no food in the bedroom’ rule and devour a whole bag of Maltesers on top of the duvet.

Sometimes he’ll find the empty red packet on the floor and resist the temptation to start a discussion about double standards.

Sometimes he’ll go out drinking so much ahead of her 30th birthday that he has to leave her party early to go home and nurse his aching throat.

Sometimes she’ll keep partying, force him out of bed at 3am to let her in the house, and they’ll call that even too.

Sometimes he’ll buy her a new fancy laptop to prove how much he believes in her writing (and to make her weekly exclamations of MY F***ING LAPTOP IS RUINING MY LIFE stop).

Sometimes she’ll cry when she remembers that he did that.

Sometimes she’ll fall asleep on the sofa until 4 o’clock in the morning, after promising she would go to bed in a minute.

Sometimes he’ll come downstairs to get her, and decide not to let the tirade of abuse that comes when he disturbs her hurt his feelings.

Sometimes she’ll get sunstroke, or food poisoning, or eat something that’s too ‘wheaty’ and turn into a quivering, vomiting, moany mess.

Sometimes he’ll use a VERY FIRM tone to tell her that if she doesn’t drink all of the water she needs to rehydrate then she’ll have to go to hospital (and then explain later that that’s just what he sounds like when he’s scared).

Sometimes he’ll show her a clip of a big kick or some good running that a rugby person did.

Sometimes she’ll make the right face to make him believe that she knows why she should be impressed.

Sometimes she’ll manage to figure out the answer to the 8 out of 10 Cats Does Countdown numbers game within the assigned 30 second period.

Sometimes he’ll look at her like she’s the cleverest person in the world.

Sometimes he’ll suggest going out for sushi instead of cooking food at home.

Sometimes she’ll think – this right here is exactly why I married you.

Sometimes he’ll look at her, panicked and say “I am in no way prepared for our anniversary tomorrow. I’m going into town and may be gone for some time.”

Sometimes she’ll look at him and think – it doesn’t matter. I’d still choose you.

Every single time.

Four years after moving day

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20150705_184939I was the hungriest I’d ever been.

You’re always your hungriest at the time, aren’t you. Until the next time when you think, no, this is definitely the one. This time I’m proper starving. That last time was nothing compared to this.

But this was the real deal.

Moving house will do that to you, what with all the packing and piling and dragging of your stuff. It’s enough to make you kiss the cheese and beans on toast that you sit on the floor of your new house at 9 o’clock at night to consume from the only plate you could find. To this day I’m confident: that is the greatest meal I have ever had.

When I walked through the door that September morning four years ago, I went over to the kitchen window of the home I suddenly owned, leant against the washing machine I was yet to be acquainted with and had a little cry.

I doubt there’s ever been a house purchase made that wasn’t loaded with emotion. A shopping trip that significant has to mean something – that a divorcee needs a new address, that a growing family needs more space, or, as in our case, that a young couple was being given their very own one bed, two bathroom step on the property ladder. If that room ratio alone doesn’t bring a tear to your eye, I don’t know what will.

I’d cried when we’d walked out of our solicitor’s office too, after signing all the papers that said that the little maisonette with the spiral staircase was soon to be ours (and also something about ‘conservation areas’ that I still don’t quite understand. Perhaps David Attenborough will pop round at some point? I do hope so.).

“Don’t you realise what we’ve just done?” I said. “We basically just got married.”

My husband wasn’t my husband yet at the time. He was my boyfriend who I’d been going out with for a solid, sensible six years before committing to co-owning any bricks. We’d rented some together – sure – but owning them meant we’d have to paint the walls, and change the lightbulbs, and we’d never really had to do that before (we just moved out if they went. It was easier). There was so much to come.

With a new house comes so many firsts. The first bath in the new tub, the first flower planted in the garden, and the first ‘discussion’ about how, in this house, we replace a toilet roll when it runs out, because we’re not savages now, are we.

And then things get more advanced, more complicated – rooms get renovated, floors get replaced, and tempers get tested like they never have before. What we know is that I have one and that when workmen are late it is short, very indeed.

But this is all part of the game we’re so privileged to play. And four years on with the walls intact and the roof still in place and a pair of sofas that we’re now just days from owning outright (we’ll take it from here DFS, thanks very much), it seems only right to charge a glass –

To the next chapter in this home of ours – to the next Christmas, the next Spring, and the next battle with a complicated bulb. And to that very first night in our very humble abode – with the floor as our chair, and the floor as our table, as we ate the greatest meal we’ve ever had and looked ahead to everything we’d no idea was to come.

 

45 Years, September and Chance

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IMG_4418If you’ve read anything about the film 45 Years, you will know that it is most definitely not a comedy.

Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay play a couple called Kate and Geoff Mercer who are preparing for their 45th wedding anniversary party. A week before the event, they find out that the body of Geoff’s first love has been found in the ice of the Swiss Alps, 50 years after she fell there. The film is about the impact that this news and everything that came before has on their marriage.

The film is excellent, I very much recommend it. Though I suggest doing what we did and watching it in the middle of the day when there are many hours left in which to feel happy. Like I said, it’s definitely not Wayne’s World.

I love going to the cinema. I love how a great film can leave you with so many thoughts to mull over, and how somebody else’s creation can reflect things that you think and feel about your own life.

It struck me that, more than anything, this is a film about chance. About people you happen to meet, the relationships you have, and the direction your life goes in as a result.

In a week’s time, aside from being September (hope you’re getting excited about Christmas, chums, because it’s COMING) we reach our second wedding anniversary and in a few more weeks it’ll be TEN YEARS since this little duo of ours got off the ground. A month of Prosecco, cards and Leon saying “I really think one anniversary is more than enough” lies ahead. I can’t wait.

IMG_20150830_203533Like so many things in life – relationships, friendships, chance samplings of a new kind of cheese – we could so easily not have happened. The night we met I really wasn’t in the mood to go out, and even less so to meet some new dude. But I did and now here we are. It’s good to have at least one good decision under your belt to help reduce the volume amongst all the horrendous ones when they wake you in the night to remind you what a dickhead you’re capable of being.

And, as a result of this almost near miss, when we got married eight years later our first dance was to Pulp’s Something Changed. Because besides being what Taylor Swift would call a ‘sick beat’, its lyrics perfectly sum up just how much of life comes down to chance meetings, and how one life-altering encounter can all of a sudden make all the other ifs, buts and maybes pale into insignificance. (And also because Jarvis Cocker is from Sheffield, which is where we met, and my plans are nothing if not neat and tidy.) Strap in.

When we woke up that morning we had no way of knowing

That in a matter of hours we’d change the way we were going

Where would I be now, where would I be now if we’d never met?

Would I be singing this song to someone else instead?

I don’t know but like you just said

Something changed.

That right there was reason #487 for me to cry all the way through our wedding (and any time I’ve listened to it since, to be honest). I think a lot about how different things could have been but then I stop because they’re not, are they? Because something changed. It sounds simple when you write it down. That Jarvis really knows what he’s doing.

It’s amazing where a good film can send your mind. And I know I’m going to be thinking about 45 Years for a long time to come.

About how striking Charlotte Rampling is. About how sad Geoff made me feel. About how much it made me want a car and a dog (I live in London, these aren’t things people just have). About what I’d have done in Kate’s situation – or in Geoff’s – if a previous love suddenly came back to haunt us. And about the huge role that chance continues to play in all our lives.

If you see it, and I very much recommend that you do, I’d be very interested to know what you think.