Anniversary

It's been a year since we were married on a boat by a man with a slightly eccentric way of pronouncing our names. Twelve months have passed since that day in Canada, and I thought the best way to celebrate would be by taking the opportunity to stay late at the office and delete some emails.

No, silly. I left work before six, which is usually a sign of impending apocalypse, and trundled home to take my wife out to dinner.

I surprised her. It is a paper anniversary, which meant a hamburger from McDonald's, wrapped in greaseproof paper, would be most appropriate, but instead I took her down the street to Otto, a lovely Italian restaurant in the building opposite the Ministry of Manpower. We had a glass of prosecco and some wine each, and I had a five course meal that culminated in me eating my wife's dessert.

The food was so good that my wife deigned to eat a mushroom (a rare occurrence indeed) as well as pinching some of my gnocchi and my burrata, but I kept a tight grip on my bread salad, my soup, and something complicated involving a puree of broccoli. Not that she starved; there was a bowl of mussels and a cod to get through. We started at just before seven and were replete by eight thirty, in time to go home and watch yesterday's MotoGP race, which we'd assiduously avoided all mention of today.

All the wine and the warm weather had us nodding off, until Stoner suddenly passed Lorenzo with ten laps to go, his bike all squirrely, which left our neighbours with the relaxing sort of evening you get when there are people yelling at the television for twelve minutes. I'm glad Stoner won: otherwise the pair of us might have had a nervous breakdown.

Instead, I've got a big book of Lovecraftian horror to celebrate my first year of marriage with. What a wonderful wife and life this is.