Monday memories: Christmas 1986

I’d been going out with Not Yet Husband for about two months. Notions of husbands couldn’t be further from my mind because my first term at university had finished and we were meeting for the first time on fresh turf: Covent Garden. Just us. Would we still like each other away from university?

(I just went to ask Husband if he had any fond memories of this trip. Readers, he had no memory of the momentous occasion. He looked hazy and said, ‘was it a big meet up in the Punch and Judy?’ ‘No,’ I said, ‘it was just us.’ ‘Oh. Did we have lunch in that place in the middle?’ I said, ‘you’re guessing aren’t you?’ He said, ‘well I have lots of memories of Covent Garden…’ I said, ‘but not this special one?’)

To be fair to the old bloke his faculties are probably going. He got glasses for the first time yesterday: reading glasses. At last I’m not the only one… When he got home from the glasses trip he did a bit of tidying. He ventured into the button box where he found a number of treasures. A tie pin (aw gawd, did I really fall for a man who wore a tie pin?); an ARP badge (air raid patrol) and a single earring of mine.

He remembered (vaguely) that these earrings had been purchased by him in our dating days (though he couldn’t put an exact date on it) during a trip to Covent Garden (where we might or might not have been with other people) and was distressed that he had only found one. (The other one was in my jewellery box; I had kept it for sentimental reasons in spite of its singleton status.)

We had wandered about Covent Garden market and saw these gorgeous earrings. They were expensive and we were students but Not Yet Husband told the girl he wanted them. To our horror, the expensive price tag was for a single earring only (damn that trendy Covent Garden) but by this time NYH was unable to back out.

Regular readers will know how much I like lizards. I have blogged about all sorts – monitor lizards here and here; a blue crested lizard here; various gecko visitors here and a skink here. But I thought the lizard fascination grew while I was in Thailand; apparently not.

I wonder what those two young people wandering around Covent Garden in Christmas 1986 would have thought if they’d been told what life had in store for them.

For scale these are about 1cm tall and wide. They are inserted from the back of the ear lobe.

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As a public humiliation tactic, each day I will show my progress (or otherwise) on my edit: page 31.