Fifteen

Benedict Ambrose and I have now been married for 15 years. To celebrate, we will call a cab and go to Edinburgh's Prestonfield House for lunch today. We will be travelling further than we imagined, for we are not at home but in an AirBnB in the Stockbridge Colonies. 

Life is full of surprises, and we had a big one on Monday morning when a three-man building crew arrived at 8 AM to gut the bathroom. We had had a vague understanding that the contractors were coming this week, but we were not prepared when they actually did. So there was me in a DFB (Deutscher Fussball-Bund) shirt (only three stars, a collector's item) and pyjama bottoms hurriedly scooping the contents of the bathroom cupboards into blue plastic IKEA bags, and there was B.A. pulling on clothes and dragging himself into a wheelchair. 

B.A.'s need for a wheelchair was also one of life's surprises, of course. However, like the building crew, it was not totally unheralded. First there was the dreadful diagnosis last May. Then there was B.A.'s coming home with a walking stick. Then there was his all-too-brief love affair with a rollator. And now there is his borrowed wheelchair, which came not a minute too soon: the day after he broke a bone in his pelvis. 

As I inwardly chant to myself whenever someone now asks me for a favour or is even the tiniest bit critical, I have a husband with cancer and a full-time job. Like St. Martha I am beset with many cares. This means that my poor brain cannot currently hold all the information it needs or make all the necessary plans. For obvious example, I didn't work out what we were going to do for a bathroom when our own was a construction site. 

I had a vague hope that this was one of companies that promised us a portable toilet, but I didn't ask outright. And B.A. had a vague hope the National Health Service would lend him a commode, but the NHS said no. And although I can just run to Tesco for the loo and to my gym for a shower, B.A. cannot. And so, after a miserable afternoon, B.A. secured an AirBnB and a taxicab, and here we are. 

We love Stockbridge, so this is a good thing. The taxicabs, with their kindly drivers who push B.A. up and down the foldaway ramps, are also a good thing.  The new bathroom will also be a good thing--as will be our anniversary lunch this afternoon. 

This morning I woke up at 5, and I thought about my dream 25th wedding anniversary party, which looks rather like a dream wedding, only festooned with silver. B.A. has promised to dance with me when he can walk again, so obviously I we must have a proper ball with a ceilidh band and a jazz quintet that plays late into the night. 

While writing this blog I began to think about Anniversaries Past. The obvious one to look up was Eight, which fell after B.A.'s first big operation, and Nine, since for a very scary period it seemed that there might not be a Nine. Interestingly enough, when my erstwhile Polish teacher asked us for the secrets of a long marriage, we did not say, "Don't die." 

However, this is now first on our Tips for a Long Marriage list.