Being married

So here we are, my darling Ian and I – married for 1 ½ months! It feels like less, though, because just a week after our wedding I had to go back to Greece to take care of my Dad while my Mum was in hospital after her knee operation – while Ian had to stay behind in London in order to fix all our papers. For four weeks we were apart – not for the first time, but for the last. And now we’ve been together here in Piraeus for ten days – and what can I say?? It’s pure bliss, it’s JUST what I’d been dreaming of ever since I was a teenager!! Believe me, marriage can be Heaven…

Everyday routine – what a wonderful thing! We’ve got the luxury of not having to get up early because we’re both freelancers; so, whenever we’re ready for the day, we crawl out of bed – at 10, 11, sometimes 12… I make coffee and a Full English breakfast, we get into gear for work, then my darling husband does his indexing and I my book promoting and my Welsh and Irish lessons on Duolingo; a tea time break with some homemade banana bread (I’ve never enjoyed cooking and baking as much as I do now!), and after work we watch our quizzes while I prepare dinner. Then, we watch one or two of our many classic movie DVDs with our tomcat Jimmy curled up on the bed with us – a perfect idyll…

Being together all day, can that work? Ooh yes, it can – when you’re with the right one. You know, you can just FEEL it when you’ve found the one you’ve always been looking for – it all feels just… right! No anxiety, no quarrelling, no misunderstandings, just kindness and love; that’s it, from here on there’s NO need to go searching anymore for anything better – you’ve got it right there, right beside you.

And even though we’ve had a bit of stress getting the papers together for my new passport from the German embassy here – and believe me, Germans are the worst bureaucrats in the world – we’ve never let it get us down or influence our lovely relationship in any way. We just go through it (and we’re not even halfway through it yet, with Brexit looming in the background and an uncertain future for EU nationals in the UK), and when we’ve finished with one set of Greek public officials for the day we just go into a nice little coffee bar and have a drink, and then back home to our idyll! It all works fine, just as long as there’s love and understanding…

I’ve been married before, as you know, but it never felt like that; my ex and I were just plain incompatible. And I’d somewhat lost my belief in marriage through that experience – but I’ve certainly got it back now! I know, marriage isn’t really ‘necessary’ anymore nowadays for having a functioning lifetime relationship – but then, I’ve always been old-fashioned. I love old movies, I love old-fashioned music, I love old books, I love retro fashion – and I LOVE being married…