Spectacles

When Two Became One

My parents met in Brockley, south London, on 4 June 1966 at a party organized by my mum’s school friend Christine Cavanagh. It’s at this point I’ll let the lovebirds take over and tell their own story, romantic and heart-warming as it is. This is taken, verbatim, from a recording made of them in the summer of last year.

I have asked my parents to recall the night they met. Mum tilts her head upwards, picking tiny sensory jewels from the black sky of memory. Dad has stomped into the study and fetched his diary.

Dad:	Why have I got ‘poaching’ written in my diary?
Mum:	Pochin. Pochin was Christine’s maiden name.
Dad:	Oh, right. [Spends the next minute fastidiously cancelling and amending the entry]
Mum:	Your dad arrived on a motorbike. He was very memorable. He was wearing an orange Bri-Nylon shirt and very tight synthetic slacks.

Silence.

Me:	What was Mum wearing, Dad?
Dad:	Clothes. And a very heavy fringe …
Mum:	Well, it was actually a hairpiece. Trouble was, I was laughing so much –
Dad:	[muttering] Drunk.
Mum:	– that it fell forward and got stuck there, low on my forehead, for the rest of the evening.
Dad:	What’s the name of that character from Planet of the Apes?
Mum:	Anyhow, your father came over to chat –
Dad:	Cornelius. That’s who she looked like.
Mum:	He came over and his opening line was ‘Hello, I’m a misogynist.’
Me:	What?
Mum:	‘Hello, I’m a misogynist.’

Dad roars with laughter.

Me:	Was that your chat-up line?
Dad:	Yep.
Me:	What, always?
Dad:	Yep.
Me:	And how often was it successful?
Dad:	Never.
Me:	Ever think of changing it?
Dad:	Nope.

Mum then embarks on an epic monologue, during which Dad closes his eyes and drifts off. After fifteen minutes of listening, I feel like I have drunk liquid morphine and every cell in my body is shutting down. I am now cutting to the end of her tangential mutterings to spare you, Dear Reader, the pain of the whole thing. Although I might release it as a download for people suffering from insomnia.

Mum:

Anyway, his shirt was vile, and it created static when we danced … then we sat and had a chat and things went on from there … and then he got up and said, ‘Well I have to leave, my mum will have done breakfast.’

Me:	What? Why? Why did he say that? Was it morning when he left?
Mum:	No. His mum used to put his breakfast out the night before. And he needed to get back for it.
Me:	Right …
Dad:	[looking in his diary and suddenly bellowing] Seventh of October 1967!
Mum:	We got married, and we had our honeymoon in Majorca at the Hotel Bahia Club in Paguera.

A profound and awkward silence as they remember.

Me:

So … Did you enjoy it?

Long pause.

Dad:

It was certainly the best honeymoon I’ve had.