A good week

OK - so who are these children got up in fancy dress?

This week saw our 43rd wedding anniversary, which we celebrated with a trip up the Yorkshire Dales for the day and then on to my brother and sister-in-law near Kendal, for an evening meal. Lovely day - but impossible to believe that it’s the forty-third such. Only when you dig out (as I just did) an image from the past do you understand quite how remote 1966 has become - we were what we looked, in those far off days. Children.

But what a fantastic journey into maturity it has been, and in what company! Margaret and I have spent getting on for 16,000 days together now, and they just get better ...

Love, as I am fond of saying, is not something you fall in. It is something you make - hour by hour, day by day, year by year, crafting it and changing it and growing with it. Wonderful.

We took a bottle of Chateau les Rigalets 2002 with us to Kendal. “Cuvée exceptionnelle, sur des fruits noir, trés suave en bouche, rondeur et finesse caractéristique du Château les Rigalets,” says one reviewer. We’d go along with that. It was one of a hoard of six dozen assorted Cahors and Bergeracs we brought back from our last foray into the Lot valley, and it was a fitting wine with which to celebrate the passing of one more very good year. Not, perhaps quite in the same league as the 1966 Pomerol our family bought us for our 40th celebration, but pretty fine.

Wine and marriage seem good partners: the more you discover about them, the better they are.