A Love Story (Day 45, 14/02/13)

We don't do Valentines Day, me and J.
Don't celebrate it, don't bother with cards, don't exchange gifts.
View it as a commercial thing; a chance for card companies to make money, for Marksies to increase their dine in for two meal from £10 to £20.

We said 'Happy Valentines Day' this morning and that'll do it. I won't get home from work until 9 tonight anyway. If I recall correctly, last year on Valentines Day I went to watch Liverpool play. J is a Blue.

So this is how I'm going to mark Valentines Day this year.

I'm going to tell you how I met my wife.

1986. Me and Mark had split up the band. (Remember that? Ego and arrogance and no way to treat your mates?) There'd been a kind of band based group holiday prior to this happening, it hadn't been much fun. I'd come home with that cheap airline induced summer cold that you get sometimes and was in no mood to go out drinking that weekend; a pre-arranged night out was postponed.

It was a Friday night in July, a week later than intended. I was drinking in The Black Bull in Walton Vale with a friend. Sounds for all the world like a lovely village pub in a tiny hamlet. It's not. We were waiting on Mally arriving. It was to be the first time we'd seen each other since the band split. And during the waiting two girls walked in. One worked with my friend so the four of us chatted for a while.

They had two choices that night; they were either going to Bootle or to Walton, it depended on which  bus came first. The Walton bus came first. Small decisions.

Mally arrived. With a bloody impressive new haircut. The week before it had been a wedge with a hell of a fringe, tonight it was pure Ian McCulloch. It became the centre of conversation for a while. I bumped into a lad at the bar that I had worked with until recently. I've never seen him since. Your life changes in small moments.

We decided to move to another pub. As you do. The Black Horse near Anfield. Conversation splintered a little. I spoke to Mally for quite a while, my friend varied between the two of us and the two girls. I found out later that J found me mysterious, cool and aloof as I wasn't saying a great deal to either her or her friend. What I actually was (at the age of 22) was cripplingly shy.

The night drew on, clubbing became an option. The State was the obvious choice. Best night out in Liverpool. Best night out Liverpool has ever had. And at some point in the night I plucked up the courage to ask this short blonde girl that I'd finally started talking to if she'd like to dance. We danced to The Waterboys, Big Audio Dynamite, The Sex Pistols, The Pogues, Lloyd Cole and we kept talking.

And we kept talking as the 5 of us walked for a cab. Just me and J talking. About anything. I told her I was starting a new job in a record shop, she told me that sounded like a bad idea. We dropped J and her friend at J's parents' house. And for two weeks I thought about nobody else.

I'd dropped the hint that I'd be in The State again on the Saturday night, told our Keith to look out for "a short, cute blonde". She was somewhere across town with a different friend who only found out at the end of the night that she'd actually wanted to be in The State all night.

She had no phone, I had no phone number for her, couldn't ring her. But I knew where she worked. I rang her at work on the first day that I had off from my new job. On Monday August 11th 1986 I rang the short, cute blonde that I had met one Friday night and I asked her out.

And 4 years later, on Saturday August 11th 1990, reader, I married her.

And every day of our lives I tell her I love her.

Valentines Day. It might be just another day but its a good day to tell stories like this.