Marriage, goes the old joke, is not a word, it’s a sentence. This weekend I will be exactly 12 years into my term. In past years I have marked my wedding anniversary by revisiting photographs from my wedding day but lately I cannot do that without feeling a little sad.
The couple in the photographs seem so much younger, better looking and less knackered than we both are today. I look at my wife Bridget’s face in photographs of that day and she has an expression that I rarely see now — one of genuine delight at seeing me. I study the expression of my younger self and he looks as if he simply cannot comprehend his good luck. What the hell happened to those two crazy kids? The short answer is life and two children happened.
I met my wife by accident when we happened to find ourselves sitting opposite each other on a train travelling from Hereford to London. We lived on opposite sides of the capital, had very different jobs and different social circles. It was only luck and the randomness of a train that could have brought us into our respective orbits. Meeting someone on a train feels so old-fashioned that I am surprised my memories from that time are not in black and white.
I am still filled with wonder at how large a role sheer luck played in bringing us together. The train was my first stroke of luck and the second was to have been single before the emergence of Tinder and other dating apps.
Tinder, by weird coincidence, is also celebrating an anniversary — its 10th — this month. I escaped the world of dating apps and for that I am deeply grateful because no algorithm would match my wife and me — outwardly we have virtually nothing in common. I also suspect dating apps would not favour people like me — the sort who can be shy, socially awkward and overly sarcastic on first meeting.
The downside of dating apps is the same as the problem with social media — they encourage too hasty judgments drawn from too few facts. Literally no one would have fallen for me if they judged me only on one brief encounter.
I feel sorry for single people today who are doomed to scroll endlessly, the illusion of choice ravaging their attention spans.
I was lucky that Bridget and I had a four-hour train journey to get to know each other. That journey began in Hereford and led to Islington Town Hall where we got married 12 years ago this weekend.
Marriage is not easy and parenthood is even harder but it is a privilege to be able to face such challenges.
If I have learnt anything these last dozen years it is that marriage is neither a word nor a sentence — it is a book whose pages we write each day, month and year.
