We appear to have been married for a quarter of a century!

The above photo was taken 25 years ago today – Independence Day, 1987. It was the first opportunity my wife and I had had to sit down and collect our thoughts while our guests caroused in the marquee in the garden of my sister-in-law’s Cornish farmhouse on the Camel esturary. The service at St Petroc’s Church in Padstow had gone without a hitch, the weather was perfect and friends and relatives had travelled from all corners of the globe to be there (my brother from Australia, my best man and chief usher both from Hong Kong).

My wife and I have known each other for 29 years. We worked for the same organisation for two years and had our first date two days after I left the place. Two years later, we married – an event which seemed so predestined (to me at least  - I’m note sure the missus felt quite the same way) that I was under the impression I’d proposed, when in fact I hadn’t.

And now we’ve been together for 25 years. I’ve always assumed we would be (if my dicky pancreas held up) - the anniversary has just come round rather quicker than I was expecting: it feels like no more than ten years has passed.

Being deeply English, my wife would die of embarrassment if I said anything remotely enthusiastic about her in public, so I’ll confine myself to reproducing my favourite Shakespeare sonnet, which says it all:

When in disgrace with fortune and men's eyes,
   I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf Heaven with my bootless cries,
   And look upon myself, and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
   Featur'd like him, like him with friends possess'd,
Desiring this man's art, and that man's scope,
   With what I most enjoy contented least:
Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising,
   Haply I think on thee,--and then my state
(Like to the lark at break of day arising
   From sullen earth) sings hymns at heaven's gate;
For thy sweet love remember'd such wealth brings
   That then I scorn to change my state with kings'.