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If you'd told me in 2012 that my 13th wedding anniversary dinner would be brought to me by a cat robot I would have said "Wow, we're still married in 2025!?' and then I'd have said, "Cat Robots. The future is going to be amazing. I assume they don't have human robots yet or my wife would have divorced me."
If you'd then told me that my 13th wedding anniversary dinner would be at Bella Italia at Center Parcs I would have said, "Oh dear, that's a bit tragic." Which is what I said tonight when we had our 13th wedding anniversary dinner at Bella Italia at Center Parcs, as I stared at what was supposed to be a chicken caesar salad, but which was somehow a load of chicken dumped on top of hardly any lettuce. I didn't know that salad could be flat.
Our romantic meal was also gate-crashed by a couple of interlopers who hadn't even bothered to show up for the actual wedding, but thought that they deserved to be at the anniversary dinner. And full kudos to my shameless son. As we sat down he said "Hello, I'm Ernie," (he introduces himself to everyone), "It's a special day. It's their wedding anniversary. So you have to give us free stuff."
The waiter said he'd see what he could do and at the end he told us that his manager had given us a round of drinks for free. So well done Ernie. You saved us over ten pounds. You only have to save another £999,990 and you'll have paid for yourself.
I suppose we have to accept the kids as part of this marriage. On our first date (or the first time we went out - it wasn't officially a date) I wanted to tell Catie that I was sure we were going to have two kids, a girl and a boy, but I managed to not do that. If I had, then I'm pretty sure there wouldn't have been a second (or rather first) date and these kids would not exist. I was weirdly sure about it in that moment though - I don't know how I slipped through time, or out of the realm of sanity, but I did feel certain about it. All in all I'd rather the future had projected back the lottery numbers, but all I knew at that point was that I needed to be with this woman. And whatever biology or science or magic was working back then, it was right to be doing so. We're created two cracking human beings. There was a newborn at the next table and Catie wondered what it would be like to have another baby. But we can't do that and destroy the prophecy. Also having a baby to look after would definitely kill me. Might be worth it though. Just to see another little creature, staring at the world confused and freaked out, drunk on milk.
13 years married to this legend (plus another four before that). I’ve stolen the best years of her life, she’s given me the best years of my life.
