Yesterday was my 10th #work #anniversary at @oxfordbrookes so I’ve made Chelsea Buns for tomorrow to celebrate. @jennaa0 doesn’t like raisins though so tagged is her special one… #ChelseaBuns #TearAndShare #TeamUX

The face that launched a dozen years. Happy Anniversary @vnemma! ????????xxxx
#12years #firstdate #anniversary

#10Years on from our first date at this very table in @pizzaexpress Bicester we’ve just had a scrummy #anniversary meal. And they gave us the entire night on the house! ????

#10Years ago today I looked into these gorgeous eyes and met my future wife. Happy anniversary @vnemma! ???????? #firstdate #anniversary

Five years later and I am employed again and we’re approaching our third wedding anniversary. We didn’t go into today aiming to commemorate this day but it has been a happy coincidence.

This morning we went to feed George and Gus Gus who we have been looking after this week and then we criss-crossed across Bicester collecting a parcel from the Royal Mail depot, going to the butchers, stopping off at Pets at Home to purchase an Arthur-exerciser (not that he has used it yet…) before finally ending up in Bicester for our vegetables.

This afternoon we went into Oxford to go to the excellent Romance of the Middle Ages exhibition at the Bodleian Library. I don’t pretend to have understood it all, but just see the early books – the illuminated manuscripts – including the first book ever printed in English was a joy. The narrative of the exhibition came alive for me as the chronology reached through to the current day. It somehow helped to see the ancient in context, when you can see the first draft scrawl of Philip Pullman’s The Scarecrow And His Servant (will the first drafts of Mr Tumnal ever there to be viewed in an exhibition?) as you see a collection of books by favourite writers: Diana Wynne Jones, Alan Garner, Susan Cooper, Kevin Crossley-Holland and Terry Jones and a description a 21 romantic hero – that of Harry Potter.

After the Bodleian, we had a potter around Oxford – where they were having a folk festival weekend and endded up having an impromptu fifth anniversary meal in the Golden Cross branch of Pizza Express.

    

A perfect day. A brilliant five years.

    

^†This also makes it the one year anniversary of my camera and my bicycle.

Afterwards we headed back to Broad Street for a bite to eat, before walking north up the Banbury Road to find St Hughes College – on the way to the museum we had spotted a National Garden Scheme poster and thought that since the sun was breaking through it might be nice to try and find it. Halfway up St Giles though we are stopped by a thin, panicky, sweat-ridden man with a story about his car being broken down and out of petrol, and no money. He needed to find two different sets of people to borrow a fiver each from to get home. Aware that indeed this could be a con trick we find his story too detailed to be at all possibly made up, and decide to give him his tenner, taking his name and address and phone number so as to arrange the return of the money.

Later, whilst enjoying the peaceful gardens of St Hughes, Emma decides that she doesn’t want the money back; that she feels good for having helped someone. And I kind of agree, although I do wonder if I, personally, would have done the same. I did believe the man, but was that my aspergers making me read things literally? Was there something else that I should have been looking for? Clearly, I still have a lot still to learn.

Not this year though. I think it would be safe to say that it was thoroughly grey and miserable, and latterly, wet. Not that I had any worse a day for it. Emma came over for lunch. We laughed at my attempts at making Vietnamese rice bread (congealed wallpaper paste really, or baked flour and water – I’m not sure which sounds the more enticing… sic.) and had a nice lunch anyway.

Then we went into Oxford, to visit the Pitt Rivers Museum. In the end, after getting there, we decided there wasn’t time enough to devour its pleasures and so we would come back tomorrow. Instead we went into town, did a bit of pottering, bought a few things and returned home to get ready for our anniversary meal out.

It’s one year on Monday since our first date, and so tonight we went out to dinner, not to Pizza Express (as then), but to The Mole and Chicken, where we ate well – very well – and exchanged gifts. I gave Emma a couple of cds of classical music that she wanted, and she gave me a framed picture of the two of us.