Well, it seems I was right.
It does take a certain kind of person to name your son Adolf and then another type again to name them Adolf Hitler.
I'd gone down to the Westfield monstrosity to get some groceries in. It was pretty tiring. I haven't really been walking much this year. I sat down on one of the armchairs they have dotted around to read my paper. A father and daughter sat opposite me. He was in his 50s, she was around 30. They were embroiled in a conversation about love.
"No you don't just know," said the father pragmatically, though without bitterness, "In the long run you have no way of knowing. Someone who seems to have everything and to be devoted to you, you think you're going to love each other forever and then four years later it's all gone wrong. And someone who looks like they'll never settle down and will always mess you around - they can change. There's no way of telling what you're going to get. You don't just know."
His daughter seemed unimpressed. She wanted to believe in the eternal invulnerability of love, but her matter-of-fact father was more philosophical and discussed the issue with an honesty that is rarely exhibited, especially in a family situation.
"When you meet "the one" you just know..." so said the girlfriend of a friend of mine in 1997 as she stared lovingly into his eyes. A decade later both of them are married to other people. Maybe she knew my friend wasn't "the one". Or maybe we get two "the ones" and he was just "the first one". But it's rude to call the first one that.
It's lovely to believe all this romantic tosh, but ultimately a successful relationship depends on a lot more - a lot of it is luck would be my guess. But I like the fact that this fella was also perceptive enough to realise that people can change. Those who look like they will stay true can become false and those who look like they'll never settle down can find someone and never stray again.
Love, it has been said, is strange.
And it was an unexpected place to hear such calmly stated wisdom and the man doing the talking just looked like any other middle-aged father.
"What you feel now," he concluded, "might not be what you feel in two years time. There are no guarantees."
People should listen to him. It would save a lot of problems. But we never learn, choosing instead to declare our everlasting love in front of all our friends and family and God and making it legally official. Who are we trying to convince? I wonder if marriage is just a way of trying to make something last forever, because it'd be too embarrassing to go back on it once you've had the big party and taken presents and stuff. Be nice if it worked.
Maybe marriage is just like me publicly stating that I am giving up drinking, knowing it would be embarrassing to have to go back on it, but then after 100 days I realise that there's no point in being a dick about it and I was living in a dream world and I quietly start it all up again.
I'd better not get married.
I don't think I will.
If I believe I love someone then that is enough for me. Without tempting hubris to kick me in the face.
But the nice part is that the man's wife and (presumably) the woman's mother, then came up to them and the family walked off together looking very happy. So the man wasn't being cynical or bitter. He seemed to still love his wife. He was just pointing out that there are no guarantees.
It's the most human and lovely thing that has ever happened in the morality vacuum that is the Westfield shopping centre.
