Married to someone different 16 10 16 (9) 25 1 27

16 10 15 Men and women are different by definition but that they are so different takes some getting used to... Take my wife for example whom I first met 50 y ago this month: this morning she was on her way to bringing me breakfast in bed as I arose, on her way out of the house to spend the best part of the day at this charity book store she works at on the day they are having an autumn sale and so exceptionally has to be appear on a Saturday. The bread was whole wheat bread which I bought only yesterday and it had a slice of Cheddar cheese as the main covering though cut so thin, with one of those cheese slicers which I never ever use except when I prepare breakfast for her! Then a few pieces of lettuce tomato and paprika all of which was a pleasant change from the shallots and tomato I generally spread to accompany my thick cut Cheddar... 

16 10 21 Of course when you meet someone of the opposite sex you don't know any of this that I am in the process of relating... So to my embarrassment when we were younger she used to tell people how when we first met I first invited her girl-friend to dance with me and then when she turned me down I turned to her instead... something I would never tell anyone about because I'd believe myself to be insensitive with no thought for the other person's feelings... but such is her wicked sometimes self-deprecating sense of humour which was a big part of her early attractiveness to me...

Over a period of time it became very clear that we were very different people. When I met her she was a fully-fledged nurse in her own country and was visiting London with a girl-friend, a colleague also just qualified, and they were over to brush up on their English, my wife's 4th language, and have a bit of fun without taking too many cares over other people's expectations of them... Later at one of her parties I would quip how we exchanged our first words in Finnish because at the German club where we met I had joined on the pretext of being a Finn so that I could gain membership without a sponsor, but that she didn't suffer my Finnish long before she switched me into English. And how thereafter she didn't suffer my poor English for long once we were married before she took herself off to a British University to read English Literature, Philosophy and History... meanwhile I had had the greatest struggle to gain Ordinary-level English in the UK General Certificate of Education examination which was basic English for undergraduates seeking entrance to University…

I then became a scientist with chemistry as my main discipline and she became an English Teacher, switching careers away from being a District Nursing Sister, when we left UK for Scandinavia in middle age: me the more practical person whilst she more the person of letters. She the one who remembered people’s names like all the patients on her hospital ward but only so long as they remained in their beds for she unlike me had no recall for people’s faces and I had no recall for people’s names…


And now as we approach old age she has become the one with an extensive circle of friends whilst I have become a solitary blogger, still engaged in trying to make some sense out of the way the world turns on its axis. She has just left to take the 11 45 train to the capital to meet a couple of her girl-friends leaving me to finish today’s blog, then fill the odd bin-liner with more of autumn’s fallen leaves...

Very different people then who more and more as time wears on begin to complement one another perhaps without excessive competition as I wish you all a good continuation to this lovely day..?

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