Today marks the 10 year anniversary of my first date with my partner, the Delightful Miss Ember, who I met in a nightclub called Oblivion in 2001 in Australia. We were set up by a mutual friend, a speed-addicted anorexic girl who was almost certainly a compulsive liar and probably also schizophrenic. She lied to both of us to set us up (“Oh, faustus, Miss E thinks you are very handsome”[1] and “Oh, Miss E, faustus thinks you’re so very elegant”). In fact the basis for the lie that our mutual friend told Miss E was that a month earlier she had pointed out Miss E across a crowded dancefloor and said to me, “don’t you think she’s cute?” I, squinting through the haze, said “Yes” just by way of pacifying my friend (in truth I could see an elegantly swaying red dress, but that’s all). And they say white lies are not a good idea…

In truth the night of our introduction included an amusing coincidence. I knew I was being introduced at some point, but I spent the hour or two before the introduction with my friend, Sergeant M. So there we were, sitting against one wall of the club, doing what Sergeant M and I do best – perving on girls. And there, on the other side of the club, was a couple playing pool. We couldn’t see the whole pool table or much of the girl due to the positioning of the table, but we were both mesmerized by a splendid, peachy bottom in a shimmering peach dress. So an hour later, I’m talking to another friend when up bobs my crazy friend, and in tow she had… a pretty young woman in a shimmering peach dress. While the introductions commenced I could look over her shoulder and see Sergeant M giving me very energetic thumbs up signals from his perving vantage point[2].

I think this introduction was an auspicious signal of how our lives would play out over the intervening 10 years. It’s been good! So today we’re having our anniversary celebrations, and we’re managing to fill our day with some of the more traditional things we’ve got up to in the past 10 years:

  • drinking too much coffee and watching a tv show we’re obssessed with (currently, Castle)
  • Eating in good restaurants
  • bludging on the internet
  • going clubbing (tonight will probably be psytrance)

Ideally we should also find time for me to play computer games while the Delightful Miss Ember does something incomprehensibly girly, but we probably won’t be able to fit that in…

Anyway, it’s a lazy day in celebration of the best thing ever to happen to me. Here’s to another 10, or 50…

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fn1: This is surely a lie that deserves a perfect 25 out of 25!

fn2: He denies this now but I think he is pretending not to remember such a delightful bottom, in order to avoid angering his wife…