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| Anniversary selfie, 17th April 2020 |
Day thirty-two, 17th April 2020
Love in Lockdown
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| 17th April 1998 Henley-on-Thames |
Happy wedding anniversary to us, 22 years married today. Thanks to some fab friends on Facebook from our Mini Club days, who have been sharing old photos, we have been enjoying looking back on life at the end of the nineties, twenty-five years which as we both get close to approaching fifty, is almost half our lives ago.
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| Just good friends Isle of Man 1996 |
I had to share this one, taken on the Isle of Man in 1996, back when we were just good friends. Friends who met every day at an Italian sandwich shop in London for lunch and friends who spent most weekends together driving up and down the UK in a convoy of Minis attending car club events. As you can see the Minis took centre stage at our wedding in Henley-on-Thames in 1998.
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| Engagement 1997 |
Photos of the two of us seem to be as rare as hen’s teeth, but I’ve come up with a few that I hope you will indulge me sharing here today.
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| Naan bread teamwork April 2020 |
What do you do to celebrate an anniversary when all bars and restaurants are closed? Despite life in lockdown, we had big plans that meant being able to leave home together and travel further than we’ve been since Monday 16th March, when we cleared out Ed’s flat in Poitiers. It was (fasting) blood test day, followed by a shop in Aldi, meaning a drive all the way to Melle, some 25km from home. We even took a flask of coffee to top up our energy levels before Adrian shopped. Once home we sat in the garden for a coffee and pastry and took a selfie, ensuring at least one other pic of the two of us to look back on.
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| First mountain climb together April 2017 |
As if I needed statistics to prove my man is above average, he has done a virtual cycling power FTP (functional threshold power) test. For a recreational cyclist a good score is between 2.5 and 3 watts/kg, but Adrian recorded a score of 3.2 w/kg, a score he hopes to improve on. I am hopeful that my yoga binging and working hard on an all over improvement in my core muscles will be enough to power me up the mountains he plans for us to climb once we are again free to travel and free to cycle where we please.
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| 17th April 2019 Canal de la Garonne |
April holiday memory
17th April 2019 and we celebrated our anniversary on the banks of the Canal de la Garonne, near Valence d’Agen, just over halfway between Bordeaux and Toulouse. The canal gave us peace and quiet, and in the shade of the plane trees we saw a flash of kingfisher, a magical sight for the morning of our anniversary. We spent much of the day sharing the towpath with pilgrims walking, in the opposite direction, on the Chemin de St Jacques. Young, older, couples, families, small groups, with bags and without; it kind of felt we were the odd ones out, going against the flow. We seem to have crossed the Chemin many times since moving to France and each time its call is a little louder, teasing me and tempting me to follow.
In the afternoon the headwinds picked up and the easy cruising speed disappeared as cycling on the flat became hard work. Adrian stretched out his lead ahead of me, leaving me to slowly get further behind. We stopped for an apple tart midafternoon and despite not feeling hungry, my energy levels were low and my speed slow, too slow it seemed for Adrian’s spreadsheet with its detailed itinerary and estimated arrival times. A pizza with wine, in Montauban that evening had never been more deservedly earned on an anniversary.
Stay indoors, stay safe.
Lockdown library
My reading selection today is for the first three novels by Fiona Valpy, set in the vineyards around Bordeaux where love and weddings are key themes.
Happy Anniversary! There will be many more, but this will always be remembered. Mary in Tucson
ReplyDeleteThanks Mary, we certainly won't forget 2020 in a hurry! Hope all well with you.
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