Eleventh and Fifth!

Here are Niall and I, with the baby Oyster, turning up at the Register Office five years ago, on a fine, cold Tuesday afternoon, to let the State know how things stood between us. As I said in my wedding speech at the party the following Saturday, by any sensible definition of the term we’d been “married” for years by then.

Six years earlier, my good friend, with whom I’d just moved into a flatshare arrangement, took my hand on a sleety Monday morning and told me he was falling in love with me. And I said, “Me too.”

Somewhere in this morass of a house, I probably still have the Filofax diary sheet from that day, on which I wrote, “9:10am: Fundamental and irrevocable alteration to the fabric of the universe.”

Because I am pompous that way. And I knew this was different.

We got married on our anniversary, because this was the day we wanted to go on celebrating. (I’m just obsessive enough to have worked out that this is the first time in eleven years that the date has fallen on a Monday again. Not sure that means anything, but it made me smile when I realised.)

Eleven years! Two children, many job changes, one house move, a procession of lovely housemates, one big extension project, much laughter, some crying, hard times and good times and pain and joy and all the bits in between – and always that deep, abiding connection, that sense of comfort and home that we give each other.

It’s good. Happy anniversary, Niall of my heart.