Sixteen Years Ago

Sixteen years ago Thursday just gone to the date (9th October) and Friday to the day my lovely wife and I started dating. Yes this was back in the day when individuals spoke face to face when dating not speaking through Twitter, Facebook or whatever else people meet on these days. Come to think of it we didn't even own a fine between us back then lol.

It all began when we went on a college trip to Alton Towers a few weeks prior to us starting to date one another, we got on really well to be honest clicked straight away (even though she thought I fancied her mate), I like to think that I was her hero for looking after her on all those scary roller coaster rides (she hated them back then yet loves them now) funny now she looks after me when I'm all nervous about going on new ones lol.

Well as I was saying, we started dating sixteen years ago on Friday 9th October 1998, I remember the day well as it was my Dad's 40th birthday, we kinda told each other how we'd enjoyed each other company at Alton Towers and maybe we should give dating a try. I still to this day remember the lovely letter she wrote to me in in pink pen telling me how much she'd enjoyed our time together at Alton Towers and she'd like to spend some more time getting to know me. How could I have refused knowing how much time and effort she'd put into writing that lovely letter.

Well I didn't she her for the next three days as I wasn't back in college till the Tuesday and stupidly in our loved up haze neither of us got any contact details of the other. As I said earlier there wasn't Facebook or Twitter to jump onto and search for people back then and not knowing her surname I couldn't look her up in the phone book either, yes back in the day you had to use a huge phone book (like the one in that Robbie Williams yellow pages TV advert) and search for people to find their number if you wanted to contact them lol.

We saw each other constantly both in and outside of college for the next few weeks then it was October half term holidays, I went with my family to Devon to shut our caravan up for the winter, I promised I'd phone her daily which I fully intended to do.

Yes I did say fully intended to do, this is where a stupid/funny (whichever way you look at it) the story unfolds, you see I wrote down her new landline number as they'd recently changed it, or so I thought I had.

The very first night I walked to the bid red phone box, yes we used pay phone boxes back then too and dialed the number I had written down, to my astonishment the voice on the other end replied "please try again you've dialed an incorrect number", I tried again and again but to no success so I spent the whole week not being able to talk to her, yes it saved me a few quid lol but I didn't half get a barrage of questions to why I hadn't contacted her all week once I got back home.

A lot has changed over the last sixteen years, we've made some wonderful friends and drifted apart from some friends too, we've changed jobs and careers which in turn has allowed us to go on some wonderful fun filled holidays, we've got married and honeymooned in Florida, have three wonderful children and even formed a new family tree link when we merged our surnames together after we married.

We've had some fantastic highs but equally some very terrible lows over the years but we've still stayed strong throughout it all, I wonder what the next sixteen years will hold in store for us? Maybe I'll be sharing my stories and words of wisdom (OK maybe just my stories lol) with my grand kids who knows eh?