Thunderbolts

I don’t know exactly when it hit me.   It might have been walking out of the pub that Sunday.   Back towards our cars and you holding my hand.   You in your mustard jumper.  Me in a denim shirt with paint splashes.  Neither of us was really dressed for any kind of whirlwind, let alone thunderbolts.   But it definitely felt like I was hit by a thunderbolt when you took my hand in yours.

Our first date was you cooking dinner at my house, as many subsequent dates were.   Late nights spent drinking wine and playing Scrabble were the new going out when you have three children under seven to factor in.    Not that I let you meet them for six months.   Lazy Sunday mornings when the children were away, doing the crossword.   Coupled with crazy weekends away, like skiing 12 peaks in Austria in 24 hours to raise money for charity.   Or walking around Amsterdam and realising I was Mrs Starfish when I had too much to drink.   In fact it was when you opened that car boot and produced a duvet that I think the real thunderbolt hit me.    A man who has a duvet in the boot of his car when it is 3am and you have pulled over to a motorway service area in need of sleep is a keeper.

It was another five years before a trip to Florence before you proposed.   Not on the Ponte Vecchio outside all the jewellery shops where many romantics do it.  Nor in any of the museums.  Nope, not us.   On bended knee in a packed Tapas bar with a napkin tied in a knot.     The wedding that followed, we have been told by friends that attended, the best ever.     It was our wedding.  Done our way.   And was perfect.     Well actually that’s not true.  You wouldn’t let me make a speech.  If you had let me make a speech it would have been perfect 🙂

Life has chugged along since then.  As it tends to do.  And there have been lots of storms.  Even thunder.  But there are still thunderbolts when you hold my hand, or call me Chuck (the northerner in you not diminished by 25 years south of Watford).

As you celebrate your birthday today.  Here is to more Scrabble, wine and most of all, thunderbolts.

I love you Mr B.

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