Marriage isn't a word...

...it’s a sentence. I’ve just happily served the first 20 years of mine, and don’t require an early release either. There certainly hasn’t been much good behaviour.

To celebrate the remarkable levels of patience and resilience this has required of the ever lovely Mrs G, we are currently residing in a cottage, just over the border in the Yorkshire Dales. Everything currently smells of sausages and woodsmoke, but we won’t go into that right now, just in case the owners are reading this and recognise my name. I’m sure it’ll have worn off by about June.

Having recently enjoyed a roast beef, fried onion and horseradish sauce sandwich I’d gladly have traded my soul for (it’s not worth much – I work in Marketing), I’m now reflecting on 20 happy years of marriage, and we’ve figured out that around 82 days of that have been spent drinking cappuccinos, and a very similar amount of time has involved me standing in shops, nodding thoughtfully at another item of clothing being tried on and saying “It looks great – but what do you think?”

Considering the amount of Star Trek annoyance I’ve subjected her to (new movie is out in May!), and Global Hypercolour fashion errors, I’ve found that the best way to a happy marriage is to regularly say ‘yes’. This is especially applicable to any discussion involving paintings being put up on walls. Remember: It doesn’t matter what you think, and it won’t do you any harm (unless you put a nail through a mains cable), so go with the flow. It’s one less bit of wall to paint too.

Agreeing to more candles is a wise thing also, and you can never have too many off-cuts of fabric tucked away in cupboards. After all, you never know when you might need to whip up yet more cushion covers. Or fashion a makeshift sling after inadvertently saying something without the slightest idea what was wrong with your statement.

Amongst my, not inconsiderable, failings, apparently stealing the duvet is high on the list (claiming you were just keeping it warm doesn’t work, by the way). Some of my hair/beard length experiments haven’t been too popular either, but nature is steadily sorting that one out for me.

Twenty years ago, we thought we were quite cool. Two decades on, I’m happy to admit I know nothing about what’s fashionable any more, and I mostly don’t care either. It really doesn’t matter if your trainers cost £100, or have a trendy badge on the back, if you can’t walk in them or they fall apart quickly.

Much like marriage, you finally realise that what you really need is something that’s comfortable, reliable, and still feels good years later, not some trendy thing that looks great, but turns out to have been based on looks alone, without checking the quality.

It helps to read the label too – I think mine must have mentioned fading somewhere, and the creasing is getting out of control.

Don’t mention the shrinkage either.

This post first appeared in my 'Thank grumpy it's Friday' column in the North West Evening Mail on the 5th of April 2013. You can view the edited version used by the paper here. They retitled it '20 years on and still going strong', and moved my title into the opening paragraph. About 30 words were removed, including the whole sentence about making makeshift slings and the very last line. Too cheeky?

From checking my notebook, it seems it's a year this week since the result of the Big Blogger contest, that resulted in me writing this column, was announced. I didn't start writing for the paper until a few weeks later, so that the actual winner could get underway with his first. Next week will be my 50th column. Hence, we're around 24500 words into my journalistic endeavours. Who'd have thunked it?

In a first for me (which shows nicely how behind the times I really am), this one was written and submitted whilst on holiday in the Yorkshire Dales, which seemed pretty damn 'modern' to me. I do have a backup column written, should I be unavoidably detained by life, or poorly, or bereft of ideas. Haven't had to use it. Yet...

(Awesome time-bubble 80s-ness in the headphones at the moment. I own a white label 12" single by Vicious Pink from the mid 80's, and managed to track down a CD with it on by the duo, which arrived this week. In six different mixes. It couldn't come from anywhere other than that timeframe. CCCan't you see?)

Shouting in the social media mirror

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Now and again, it’s good to reaffirm that you’re a (relatively) normal human being. One excellent way of doing this is to go to a business exhibition. Despite what you might have surmised from reading my previous columns, I am employable, and even capable of acting like a regular person most of the time, even joining in the Monday morning conversation about the weather over the weekend, and why (insert name of footyballs manager here) should be fired immediately. The mug! True, there are times, often involving a caffeine deficiency, where it is like having the distilled essence of ten moody teenagers in the room, but I try and get that out of the way when people I genuinely like aren’t around to see it. As part of my ongoing experiment with what others call ‘working’, my ‘job’ involves me occasionally needing to go and see what some of my colleagues get up to outside the office, and what our competitors do to try and make sure that they do whatever my colleagues do better than ...

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