Happy Anniversary

Apparently today is our wedding anniversary. Oops. As we have two anniversaries a week apart (registry office on account of being the 2nd Mrs Harrison, plus church blessing) you'd think I'd manage to remember at least one of them. In fact, it's not even a case of forgetting but rather getting round to doing something about it. Anyway, this year I have failed miserably so instead of a card here is a little blog post for my husband. I hope he likes it otherwise my next entry could be called 'Does anyone know a good divorce lawyer?'
We have been married for eleven years, not a hugely long time I know but still, not bad going. I have been reflecting on how things have changed in those years, what do we have to show for it? Well, clearly there are the obvious things; we now have a psychopathic hedgehog, a fairly well adjusted cat (apart from that worrying phase when he kept trying it on with a pink feather duster) and an eight year old with a Calpol habit, none of which were in existence that sunny day in July 2002. This is our third home together and we have both been through three cars each. Had we shunned private vehicle ownership in favour of a more eco-friendly way of travelling we could probably have paid the mortgage off by now such would have been the savings. We have both had several different jobs plus short periods of unemployment. We have had times when money has been tight and times when it has been a little bit less tight. We have made new friends and sadly lost old ones. In brief, we have been through a fair bit together.
So, we are both a bit older and greyer and hopefully a little wiser. The lovely dinner set we had as a wedding present has gradually been chipped, broken and used for the cat's food. The huge fluffy towels are a bit frayed and threadbare and get used to mop up when I defrost the freezer. I no longer try to impress by baking home made brownies and delicious meals totally from scratch. I still iron his shirts but not with that same enjoyment which came with the novelty of being a new wife.
So, what will the next decade or so bring? No doubt a mixture of good and bad, feeling well and being ill, having no money to spare, being able to splash out a bit. In a nutshell, our wedding vows.

A nice bit of British classism

As you all know by now I have what some may consider an unhealthy obsession with the relative merits of local supermarkets. I do particularly like the posh one up the road from me and when I go there I feel all middle class and grown up as I choose between the chargrilled artichokes and the olive and manchego platter. However, on a recent visit I was left feeling quite shocked and confused after spotting a customer buying a copy of ‘The Sun’ newspaper. Now I don’t like to be judgmental but I’m going to be anyway. To explain to anyone from a different country who may be reading this, ‘The Sun’ contains pictures of scantily clad ladies, no news and could easily be accessed by someone with a reading age of 7. In a nutshell, it is not what you expect ‘Waitrose’ clientèle to be buying.

When I relayed this dismaying news to a friend, he asked if I was sure they weren’t buying  ‘The Sun’ in a kind of post-modern ironic way, a bit like people who send their children to fee-paying schools buy ‘The Guardian’. (Kerrching! I have now managed to alienate the remaining 50% of my friends, the ones who were smugly chuckling about ‘The Sun’) I assured him that this was not the case as I had overheard them talking and they didn’t even know how to pronounce ‘cous-cous’ properly. I grabbed my elderflower and raspberry terrine and practically ran out of there.
This story takes me back to the early days of my marriage. A semi-
famous soap star had died in an accident and the only paper covering in was ‘The Mirror’. I asked my husband Geof to buy a copy on his way home so I could read about it. He said he would, but that he would have to divorce me afterwards!

(Disclaimer – I love all my friends and family. I don’t care what newspaper you read, where you shop, where your kids go to school. You are all lovely, warm, caring people and that is what matters!)