Today is our 23rd Wedding Anniversary.
Wow, 1985. Boris Becker won Wimbledon for the first time the day after our wedding, we watched the original Live Aid on honeymoon the Saturday after. Ireland was a depressed dump, Mrs T (Tinman, not Thatcher) lost her job about four months before the wedding, and I lost mine about four weeks after it. She soon got a new job, which she absolutely hated, but she had to keep at it because I went self-employed and really struggled at the start. We often ran out of heating oil, our car was a wreck and we were frequently behind on our mortgage.
Fast forward to today. As Mrs Tin is only 45, she has now spent more than half her life married to me. She is, obviously, a saintly, long-suffering lady.
When we’d been hitched for about about eighteen months we made friends with a couple who were five years married. That seemed so long, we just couldn’t imagine it. Now look at us.
She’s sitting at the kitchen table opposite me as I type this, and she has no idea what I’m doing. I know she’ll never read this, which is good, coz I’ve standards of cynicism to maintain.
We’ve had bad times – a miscarriage, the loss of a parent each (within 4 months of each other), a severe bout of depression for one of us (OK, me), and last years medical problems which gave birth to the name Tinman18. We’ve had great times, the birth of each of our three children, a fantastic trip to Italy for her 40th and an even better one to New York to celebrate 25 years since we ‘got off with each other’.
Overall, though, we’ve had far more good times than bad times. We’ve laughed an awful lot. We’ve fought an awful lot. But she’s still the best friend I’ve ever had.
Happy Anniversary, Mrs Tin. Love you to bits.
