Love is for life, not just for Valentines....

13 years ago this year MrEH and I got married. It was a sunny day. It was also alternately a rainy, hail-y, windy and thundery day...I seem to recall the forecast was "changeable" although we mostly avoided getting wet. Apparently it was also cold....I've been told this by a number of people since - mostly they've continued by saying "Not though you two would have noticed...!"

We met at a beer festival - I was working on the admin team, and MrEH was with the chaps looking after the beer. I don't remember him terribly well from that first year to be honest - I know we met as I have photos proving it, but it can't have been love at first sight. It wasn't love at second sight either - although I do have a clear recollection of not only meeting him, but having a fairly long conversation that time. Third time we met properly was back at the original Beer Festival - fast forward a couple of years and I was Deputy Organiser and he was back looking after the beer. On occasions this took him to the lofty heights of the top of the scaffold "stillage" that the beer sits on, and from there he honed his awesome chat-up methods - namely of throwing tiny bits of wood more commonly used for sealing up beer casks at me. (How old was he at the time? Well, you do realise that "boy years" are a bit like "Dog years", don't you? So mentally, about 7, probably!) Amazingly enough though this method worked, and by the end of the week he'd decided he quite liked me, and I'd decided he'd do...for the time being...

13 years on, and there will be no cards bought today, no huge bunches of flowers, or big boxes of chocolates. We don't "do" Valentines day. We tell one another "I love you" regularly, we don't need big commercial entities telling us that we "should" do so on one particular day of the year. We are each the person who the other most likes to spend time with. We never run out of things to talk about, but, conversely, are comfortable to sit in silence. I tease him for his obsession with news and current affairs, but as a result probably keep up to date with such things more than I would otherwise. He takes the mickey out of my clarinet calling it a "Spit Trumpet" but never complains when I practise - sometimes the same phrase of music over and over and over...he gets up ahead of me every weekday morning and brings me a cup of tea. I gently mock his rugby training nights, telling him to enjoy "playing with his little friends" and he ribs me endlessly for my habit of jumping about when I get excited about something. He infuriates me with his habit of leaving dirty clothes piled in a heap for days and then dumping them all at once in the laundry basket, and my habit of leaving dirty pots and pans in water in the sink maddens him

We've discovered the Hebrides together Island by Island, the original decision to go was almost spooky in the way we both mentioned it at the same time, while watching the Ferry unload at Uig one evening on our first visit to the Isle of Skye. We both enjoy the experience of travelling to somewhere as much as arriving there - particularly if trains are involved, and will cheerfully take any excuse to jump on board one. When we were talking about ideas for our honeymoon once the idea of a round Britain trip using Rail Rover tickets had surfaced, there were never any other thoughts! He suggested one of my favourite songs for the first dance at our wedding, and a whole group of my friends shrieked in delight when they heard what it was (Roger Taylor - "Tonight", in case you were wondering) which may not be the usual response to a first dance song, but made us laugh a lot!

As much now as the day we got married, he's my very best friend, and I simply can't imagine life without him. I don't need an overpriced card and a bunch of imported flowers to know that he feels the same way about me, too.

Robyn