How I Met Your Mother

I read this lovely story on Green Ink a few days ago about how Phil and her fiancé met.

It’s such a great story: a sort of Sliding Doors meets Richard Curtis movie. Romance isn’t my favourite genre but I do love it. There is something perennially hopeful about love stories – I guess that explains the success of romance books and films.

Anyway, it made me think of how Husband and I met. And I thought to myself ‘gosh, is that a story I’ve never told my blog?’ I think it is.

The polite, unrevealing account is that Husband and I met at university.

You might need to brace yourself for the more accurate version. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. Here it is:

When I went to university I moved into a hall of residence. I was on the top floor of a three story block. My immediate neighbour was another first year girl, L. Opposite L and I were three final year students: two chemists and a mathematician. Not Yet Husband (Not Bloody Ever Husband had I known this story!) lived in the block next door.

During the first week NYH approached his friends, the three third year students on my corridor and said ‘I hear you’ve got two fit girlies on your corridor. Which one do you recommend I try first?’ (I am resisting the urge to punch that twenty year old version of him.)

‘Ah,’ the three third years said, ‘L’s got a boyfriend at home. You’d best try Jenny first…’

Ouch.

It’s not quite the romance of Green Ink Girl’s anecdote is it? But it is my story. And to give him his credit he’s stopped calling women ‘girlies’ and as a direct result we have been married 19 years…

More about Hull

I’m continuing with Hull today for I have a very soft spot for it.

At the end of my first year (1986) I moved out of halls of residence to live with some friends in a big old red brick, Victorian house, 409 Spring Bank West. There were seven of us and we drew lots for the rooms. I can’t remember where I drew but I ended up living in the downstairs front room. It was a gorgeous, large room with a lovely fireplace that had been ruined by a modern gas fire.

Opposite us was a graveyard. We called it the Groovy Graveyard… because it was. I remember always wanting to take pictures of it and I can’t believe I never did. I might have to visit this summer just to take some…

After I graduated I left Not Yet Husband in Hull, doing his PhD and I disappeared down to London to find a job. I found the first of several uninspiring jobs in entirely the wrong industry.  This, and missing NYH, (feel free to barf) contributed to the decision six months later to move back to Hull.

I bought a tiny little house; a two up, two down with a bathroom extension on the back that looked as though someone had planned it after a long night at the pub.  We filled it with cats - two of our own, followed by one wedding present and Not Yet Husband brought Pepper the Dog over from the Post Grad house.

One summer we went to the Ferens Art Gallery Summer Exhibition. We saw this picture by Belinda Moores in the exhibition for a princely sum of fifty pounds. It was just like my front room bedroom in Spring Bank West of my second year and we both loved it. We had no money, and it seemed like a fortune and terribly reckless but I went and bought it. They put a red sticker on the picture and I was allowed to pay in instalments! We were getting married that year and it seemed like the right thing to do.

I do believe that if you buy a picture because you love it - I mean really love it - that you will always feel the same way. I still feel as much for this charcoal as I did the day I bought it. It’s moved with us around the UK and now it’s in Thailand hanging outside our bedroom where it reminds us of our younger lives in Hull.

On truths and history lessons

We went to see Clash of the Titans over the Easter weekend. We’d missed the 3D showing but yeaahhhh, it was okay; I didn’t look at my watch... Our expectations weren't high as we’re not getting out much as the moment with the Red Shirts causing all kinds of chaos throughout Bangkok.

Sam Worthington, Perseus in the film, has been widely quoted as describing it as a movie about "… a guy on a winged horse in a skirt with rubber swords battling monsters.” It is, he said, a "fun, boisterous popcorn movie. We're under no illusions, it's not a history lesson."

In spite of this, watching the film took me back to 1985 and my interview at Hull University. I spent the whole of the train journey to Hull reading the myth of Perseus. I was preparing to persuade the Department of Classics to give me a place on their degree programme based entirely on two holidays in Greece and my father telling me Greek myths as bedtime stories throughout my childhood. Oh, I had A’Levels too, just not in anything very relevant.

At my interview, Dr Hilton was lovely, asking me lots of questions about my A Levels, what I was doing with my gap year and what I’d seen while on holiday in Greece. (One of these excursions had been a school trip where we HAD seen all the important sites – the other was a beach holiday!) Then as we finished up, he said “Did you come up by train? Did you see the bridge?” I didn’t know what he was talking about as I’d spent the train trying to cram myths into my head so I could talk knowledgeably to my interviewer but I kind of felt this was important. His eyes sparkled; it was the way he said ‘the bridge’ that gave me a clue, more like ‘The Bridge.’ ‘Yes’ I said, hoping for a bit more information. ‘Impressive, isn’t it?’ Dr Hilton said. ‘Very,’ I said, nodding.

Anyway, bless them, they gave me a place and I knew I was going to love it there.

I got back on the train at Hull Paragon station to return to London and with no more pressure to cram, sat gazing out of the window. Into my view came a bridge. The Bridge. It got bigger and bigger and bigger as we passed right by it.

 

The Humber Bridge held the world record for the longest single span suspension bridge for seventeen years. Its presence crossed the last major unbridged estuary in Britain. The towers were 155 metres high and its span 1,410 metres and a total of 480,000 tonnes of concrete were used to build it.

Phew, thank god for the bluff. 

Research

‘Write about what you know’ the saying goes, so the mother of my MC is a university lecturer in the subject of my first degree (classics). As well as being a classicist, if I refine the character’s special interest, it enhances the growing symbolism appearing, quite of its own accord, throughout the story.

Classics, it’s perfect. I studied it at, in the words of Edmund Blackadder, “one of the three great universities… Oxford; Cambridge; Hull…” One tiny problem is that all my textbooks are currently residing 6,000 miles away in the attic of our house in the UK. But, there is another wee problem. I’m sure I’ve told you this before, Husband says I know so little about the subject that I did my first degree in, that really, I’m obliged to give my certificate back to the university.

So I got to thinking some more. One of our cohort went on with his study and is still an academic of the subject. Oh so, straightforward: a little bit of googling and I found an email address for him at a British university. I’m not sure … he won’t mind the twenty year break since asking him for help with my Latin…

Not a nanosecond went by and I got a bounce-back from Mailer-Daemon. Who the hell is Mailer Daemon anyway? And how did he know so quickly that clever friend from many years ago is no longer at said university?

Well, I checked, but Facebook, Friends Reunited etc isn’t his thing, but he was listed on the university alumni site – they will forward my message to him. But they may think he’s at the useless email address too. And how long will it take? Oh well, it’s gone now, so let’s see. There’s always his publisher too. I suppose I should try that next.

Next on the list of people to contact, is clever brother who’s a doctor. I’ve only just discovered the god complex of writing. I don’t feel it with all writing because crap stuff happens in books to nice people. However, when I’m killing someone off – even before the story starts, I take great delight in how I kill the not so nice characters off.

Finally, I’ve got a contact from my sister for someone who deals in secondhand books… but that’s written on the back of an envelope currently residing somewhere in my paper mountain: hmmm that could take some time to find too.