3 May 2024

‘Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh.’ Genesis 2:24

Ah, the feeling of being able to have a shower and wash my hair- yes it’s still hanging on!-again after 3 days is so wonderful. I’m used to the pump now and don’t mind it too much, the main drawback being that I can’t get it wet in any way. Steve disconnected me beautifully last night: most cycles I have been making use of the amazing service set up by the LOC in which a nurse comes to the house to do the honours, but the timings didn’t work out yesterday as I hd somewhere more important to be: Isaac’s school Inventors’ Fair.

It was lovely to tour the fair and listen to the children’s confident and enthusiatic pitches for the inventions that they had come up with.

I crashed out comatose at 10 pm last night, meaning that I at least clocked up a fair amount of sleep before the inevitable 4 am wake up. I conducted an experiment yesterday to see if taking only one steroid at lunchtime instead of two would make any difference: unfortunately the only results were nausea all afternoon and evening and the same manic wakefulness in the wee hours, so I guess that was a fail…

I thus found myself in the kitchen at 4.30 this morning, satisfying my hunger pangs with a wonderful carrot cake cookie, another amazing creation from Master Baker Carrie. With full energy restored, I looked around the kitchen and wondered what I could usefully do. A lot, it so happened. I peeled the potatoes and cut them into chunky chips in preparation for our Friday homemade fish and chip lunch. I got the fish out of the freezer to defrost. I made Isaac’s pancake batter for his breakfast, I unloaded the dishwasher, sorted the washing and got some things ready for this evening’s trip to Dorset. Wins all round, and the activity seemed to satisfy the steroids as they let me crash back into bed and calmly lay there cuddling my Care Bear…I think I may even have got a bit more sleep before the alarm went off.

Another thing I can’t do with the pump on is go in the oxygen chamber, for obvious reasons to do with the likely explosion of hazardous chemicals, so I’m back in it again this morning. I do like my twice daily sessions, snugly enclosed in my tent and able to focus entirely on whatever I decide to take in there, which for the last couple of months has been the mammoth project that I’ve been working on for Steve and the children. This is finally done so now my work is blogging and transcribing music (whilst also constantly adding to the Lists for Steve). It is a strange thing to be spending every possible moment focused on preparing to leave this earth in the best way possible for both myself and those around me.

Anyhoo, back to 1995 we go: I assume that’s what you are all waiting for…

So we had a wedding to plan! To help us, Steve and I drew on our experiences of weddings so far, the sum total of which was the song from My Fair Lady ‘I’m getting married in the morning’. I would warble this to Steve on a regular basis until it was stuck in both of our heads; we thus had no hesitation settling on a kick off time of 11 a.m. for the marriage ceremony. Of course, we later discovered that most weddings start rather later than that, mainly for the practical reason of people travelling. That didn’t enter our minds: many belated apologies to those guests who no doubt had a nightmare crossing half the country to arrive in Surrey for 11…

Many of the other arrangements were similarly naive: our wedding list was modest and hand-written:

-Mop

-Bucket

-Chopping board

-Roasting tin

-Fondue set

We ended up with two fondue sets, the list not being in any way collaborative. But we also received all of the other things, which were colossally useful, and I’m pleased to report that the roasting tin is still going strong after nearly 30 years (thanks Andy!). Who needs a posh John Lewis wedding list?

This was of course the day that Becca became Bridesmaid Becca; my only bridesmaid as I wanted to keep things simple and not too expensive for my parents. This also resulted in me choosing a dress for Becca that wasn’t ideal in colour or shape but it was cheaper to hire than the one I really wanted… Becca I’ve never shared that detail but have felt bad about it for 29 years.. love you so much for being willing to be put in a meringue that was more blue than purple… Steve’s wedding speech did refer to ‘the trouble we had getting Becca into that dress’, which so came across in the wrong way but did raise a lot of laughs as Steve endeavoured to redeem himself.

Anyway, the main event was perfect. I was rather keen to get to the church and arrived way too early, driving round and round the village of Horsell in the wedding car until it was close enough to 11 to make an appearance. I certainly didn’t keep Steve waiting… my own meringue and I practically ran to the altar. Another thing that we weren’t fully aware of was the whole wedding suit/cummerbund/cravate thing so Steve wore a navy suit with a tie that featured purple flowers- yes, purple was indeed the theme.

Why purple? Why PurpleSam? It goes back to when I was four years old and desperately wanted a purple bicycle. My parents couldn’t find one so painstakingly transformed a white bike with purple paint: I couldn’t have been more delighted. Soon after I moved on to asking for a purple bedroom, and the rest is history. When Steve and I were discussing possible girls’ names for babies, I dismissed his (frankly ridiculous) suggestions of ‘Sharon’ and ‘Michelle’ and told him that there was only one name that we needed to consider: Lydia- a Biblical character who was a seller of purple (cloth that is, pretty sure you can’t sell a colour) with a wonderful story of conversion (‘whose heart the Lord opened ‘). Happily we were blessed with our very own Lydia in 1998.

The ceremony was moving and beautiful, and I loved making my promises to Steve. It’s easy to say the ’till death us do part’ bit when you are 21; much less easy when it becomes reality, especially many years sooner than you expected… And the rings… The Ring Decision is one of the hardest to make; we have been talking about it recently. I really wanted to keep my rings on when the time comes: my engagement ring, wedding ring and beautiful eternity ring that Steve presented me with on our 25th anniversary in 2020. He proposed to me again, the best one yet- not in the middle of a road or a Woking bedroom, but at the most beautiful location in all of Scotland, the Glenfinnan monument in the highlands, a stone’s throw away from the famous Harry Potter viaduct.

‘Will you stay married to me for another 25 years?’ Steve asked as he placed the ring on my finger. I replied with a big yes and a bigger smile.

Oh Steve, if I could do anything to keep that promise I would…

But we have both – tearfully- agreed that the rings should be taken off and entrusted to Steve. That feels more right than burying them in the ground.

I’ve digressed again… sorry! Time for the reception, which was held at a lovely hotel in Weybridge with a beautiful garden. It was one of the hottest days of the year- wonderful to have full sun but rather oppressive for the guests in their wedding finery (one cheeky guest took himself off to a hotel bedroom to run himself a cool bath, but I can’t talk as I also went in search of a bathroom to scrape my foundation off mid-reception- it was the one and only time I have ever worn make-up and I hated it!).

We also didn’t have any concept of an evening do on our radar, so once the wedding meal was over at around 4 p.m., Steve and I were waved off in his Vauxhall Astra, which had been rather doctored by Steve’s over-enthusiastic friends, trailing cans and all. Confetti was still pouring out of the air blowers weeks later…

Our honeymoon was a lovely wedding gift from a family member- a week in their thatched holiday cottage near Salcombe, Devon. We broke the journey by spending our wedding night in Salisbury. It hadn’t occured to us that we might be quite hungry by the evening- very hungry, actually, since wedding nerves and excitement had meant that neither of us had eaten much of the lunch. We tried to get a table at a restaurant in Winchester but everything was booked and we thus found ourselves in the queue in Burger King… on our wedding day. It was a surreal feeling. I wanted to shout to the whole restaurant: ‘We got married today!!’

The honeymoon was wonderful- there are few places nicer than the West Country in glorious weather, which we enjoyed all week. The highlight for Steve was no doubt the ‘Rockpool Ramble’ which we signed up for at the local beach. We wondered if we would be the only honeymooners participating.. as it turned out, we were the only adults, with the group consisting of under-10s…but Steve was in his element.

Six months counting chickens had been enough for Steve, and he was now working for Admiral Computing as a software developer; on our return from Devon he was posted to Altrincham, near Manchester, and given accomodation in a shared company house. I was allowed to unofficially tag on, but there were no concessions: we arrived to find that one of the single blokes had, student style, bagged the big double bedroom which took up the whole top floor of the town house, leaving us with a tiny room which the double bed almost entirely filled. At least it was a double… However it was an excellent arrangement as I was able to easily commute across to York for the necessary seminars and tutorials (lectures could be more easily avoided). Also, we had few financial outgoings and could save up for a deposit to buy our own house.

There was a lot of discovering about each other to be done as we started our newly-married life- we had known each other only a year and never lived together. In my first week on the job I proudly presented Steve with a lovingly-made spaghetti bolognese. He looked uncomfortable.

‘I really don’t like spaghetti bolognese,’ he revealed apologetically, but with a definite sense of ‘please don’t make it for me again.’ In 29 years, I haven’t.

We soon settled into our new routine: Steve and the other guys going out to work every day and me studying evey minute until they returned. It all worked well, despite the fact that I usually found myself cleaning the kitchen up after several men rather than just the one…

But there was a slight complication. I was pregnant. Steve and I have always been blessed by being able to have babies at the drop of a hat, against the odds, and at unexpected times… I related this to my uni supervisor, Mike Cordner.

‘You can’t carry on with the course,’ Mike informed me. ‘There’s no way you will manage.’

‘If I don’t do it now, I won’t ever do it,’ I firmly told him, and I set about trying to complete my final year in one term. This was theoretically possible as almost all of the taught stuff took place in the Autumn term, with the Spring term being set aside for completing coursework essays and writing the final dissertation. The baby was due at the end of January, so I tried to get as much of it done as I could before then. In the end I submitted my dissertation on Romantic autobiographical literature when Michael was 6 weeks old… I don’t think I’ve ever written as much rubbish in my life…

We only lived in Altrincham until Christmas; Steve managed to get posted to Admiral’s Stevenage office which enabled us to plan to set up a home for ourselves and our impending arrival. There was no Rightmove in those days: buying a house involved touring local estate agents and coming away with piles of photocopied particulars. I remember Steve and I having a blast doing this, Sherbet Dip Dabs in hand… what must the agents have thought about these two kids who were clearly playing at being in the property market? But we were totally serious, and secured both a mortgage and 2-bedroom house in the lovely village of Knebworth. We moved in a few days before Christmas, me heavily pregnant and Steve with a dose of full blown flu, but we managed it somehow. We hardly had any stuff anyway: with no cash to spare, we had to make do with free or charity shop furniture. One of my old school friends kindly brought us a little sofa that she no longer needed, strapping it to a trailer for the journey around the M25. Unfortunately one of the two sofa cushions flew off the trailer enroute, so Steve’s completely unmatching floor cushion was squashed into the void. It worked, and we didn’t care a jot. Our modest start meant that we have always really appreciated everything that we have been able to afford as time has gone by.

It was a great moment when I relegated my uni books and notes to the attic and I could throw myself into motherhood, which I was loving. This backfired rather, however, when the degree results came out… I had worked so hard to prove that I could pass the degree that I had somehow ended up just one mark short of a First and was required to attend a viva with an external examiner from another university. I brushed the letter off entirely, delighted with an excellent 2:1, the only annoyance coming from the fact that I clearly could have got away with doing much less work. There was no doubt: I wouldn’t be going through any viva…

Unfortunately my family conspired to persuade me otherwise and won, so the books had to come back out of the attic. It felt like a useless pursuit- by now I had a full dose of baby brain and the uni life seemed a million miles away. But I did my best to pour over the books in an effort of preparation, and off to York the three of us went.

The examiner was a nice enough lady who was sympathetic to the fact that my 4-month old was screaming for a feed outside of the room, but her questions were ruthless and I floundered like a fish out of water. I remember babbling on about T.S Eliott but she ended up giving me the answers that she was looking for. I nodded heartily and couldn’t get out of the room fast enough.

Once Michael had been fed, we walked around the uni’s campus lake awaiting my fate. Mike Cordner appeared looking apologetic. ‘It’s a 2:1, I’m afraid..’

Well I knew that: there was no disappointment. I had married, started a family and finished my degree 6 months early. I was perfectly happy. I was even sent a letter of special recognition from the university for my achievement- that meant a lot. (In a wonderful example of things coming full circle, I was rewarded many years later with the opposite scenario: achieving 1 mark over a First for my MA in Composition at City University. Yes, I even got to City in the end, as well).

Michael was a pretty demanding child, eternally hungry and fussy as a baby and mightily strong-willed as a toddler. From the minute he could talk, he was presenting arguments to us and winning them. After endless years of frustrating both his parents and teachers with his determination not to confirm to educational or behavioural ideals depsite his clear intelligence, Michael finally fullfilled his assertion to us that he would ‘do it his way’. Michael’s unwavering confidence and gift of the gab has resulted in not only his rising quickly to managerial roles in digital marketing, but in him launching his own business offering a revolutionary new model for school trips, its promising early success meaning that he and his business partner are about to quit their day jobs to work for the business full time. We couldn’t be prouder.

It is still difficult to believe, however, that we were keen to add a second child to our collection when Michael was at his peak of difficult toddlerdom. It was a punt worth taking, however: we were rewarded with quiet, placid little Lydia, and couldn’t have been happier.

Michael, however, was rather less enamoured with his new sister. ‘I’m did bite her’, he revealed matter-of-factly when tiny 2-week-old Lydia suddenly emitted ear-piercing screams from her pram… This kicked off many years of difficulties between the two of them- Michael will deny this (and probably win) but it was definitely one sided. ‘But I love you, Michael,’ Lydia would sweetly say whenever her brother hurled some physical or mental ills in her direction.

When a second sister arrived less than 2 years later, Michael saw this as an excellent chance to further annoy his original sibling.

‘I love this sister,’ he asserted, shooting a wicked look in not-quite-2-year-old Lydia’s direction. ‘Her name is Hannah’.

Her name was not Hannah- but it wasn’t far off. Our surprise but totally wanted number 3 was named Ariane, a name I first came across in one of those true life stories that featured heavily in the Readers’ Digest that my parents subscribed to. The name means ‘Song of Grace’, which I loved. It turned out that our smallest ray of sunshine was anything but graceful and had a personality closer to the Ariane rockets that were notoriously famous for exploding every time they tried to take off; nevertheless she was bold, sweet and constantly entertaining, and we adored her.

There we go: married, home-owners, 3 children- all by my 26th birthday (quite literally, as that was the day Ariane was born).

I’m dragged back to the present; we are now happily settled into Cloud 9 and somehow it is approaching midnight. Steve is urging me to stop writing and come to bed; I’m shattered and chemo crash seems to have some early… I am reminded about my marriage vows to ‘love, cherish and obey’- so I do…When I have finished the paragraph and a bit of editing…. Good night!

‘Nevertheless let every one of you in particular so love his wife even as himself; and the wife see that she reverence her husband.‘ Ephesians 5:33