It is late October 1978, in a small one bedroom flat in the Crystal Palace area of south London. Two guys who have known each other for around eight weeks are lying together on a sofa, wrapped in each other’s arms and talking.
Basically, the talking goes on all night, and by the time one of the two has to get ready for work, arrangements have been agreed, troths plighted and what they certainly hope will be a lifelong partnership has been forged.
Fast forward for forty years, and the two guys – one now in his early seventies, the other in his late sixties – met some 30 friends and family members to celebrate the 40th anniversary of that partnership – now, by some totally unlooked for legislative miracle, turned into a legal marriage.
My husband Michael was one of the parties to that troth plighting moment, and I was the other. As I remarked at the celebration, it possibly sums up our relationship that the first manifestation of our new domestic arrangements was for Michael to go out and spend money, buying some nice new Wedgewood china on his Harrods credit card. Indeed, at one point when discussing the coming together of our lives, the worst we had to confess was to own up to our respective credit card debts!
Looking back over the years between that night in 1978 and today, we could never say that it had been roses all the way – inevitable things intervene, including illness and death, robberies and insecurities. Some decisions were made which look bad with hindsight, and issues arose which could have been handled better if we’d each been able to communicate properly. However, are these not things that could be said of any long-term relationship?
Discussing this all one evening recently, looking back to those two guys on the sofa in 1978, the overriding conclusion we came to was that it felt right. Making the commitments and promises we did that night was easy to do, because we were confident in our decisions and in each other. Whatever else has happened since, we can both honestly say that the feeling of rightness has never gone away: it has never been cosy or comfortable, because we are both too curious, whilst Michael is too restless and I’m too easily bored.
Our day of celebration proved to be a truly memorable occasion – we had great fun seeing everybody and the service, food, staff and surroundings at the Savoy were magnificent. Like the rest of our lives together, it felt right.
Now we move on to the next phase of our adventure together: semi-retirement for Michael and a shift towards fiction writing for me. We may also move sometime in the next year or so, in search of warmer climes and a less demanding house. Who knows what all that will bring? We’re looking forward to finding out.
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You can see the full set of images from our anniversary celebration here. Our thanks to our fantastic photographer Colin Baldwin for giving us such a great record of a very special day.
By the way - just in case you're interested, we still have the china, and later expanded from the pieces Michael bought that day into a full dinner service, with the help of friends and relatives at Christmas and birthdays for several years, along with diligent attendance at Harrods and Selfridges sales throughout the eighties. Though such things are deeply unfashionable these days, we remain immensely fond of our Wedgwood Petersham set.