How I met my other half

As seen in the forum of Purplecoo:
The quick and easy answer is “At a wedding” but that doesn’t explain how I happened to be at that particular wedding. To explain that I need to take you back to 1972.

Thelwell

In 1972 I was a pony mad 12 year old living in Norfolk. My whole life revolved around my friend’s stables, every weekend and straight after school I could be found cleaning tack, mucking out, grooming in order to get a ride of my favourite pony, Trigger. He eventually became mine but that is another story.

My other joy was writing letters and receiving letters so I had numerous penpals scattered all over the world. But I was keen to have a pen pal who shared my interest in horses. I regularly read a Pony Magazine which had a Penpal section each month. So I wrote to a girl in Surrey. She wrote back explaining that she had had lots of responses and her twin sister would like to write to me. Her sister was JK, she lived in Epsom Downs in Surrey.

For many happy years we communicated by post sharing our joy of horses ad other animals. Then when we were 16 , JK announced that she was in love with a man called PT, she left her home and went to live with him. Being rather innocent I was shocked and stopped writing to her.

Fast forward to 1984. I am just completing my Social Work training. I’m up in Leeds. I need to find work. My thought is to try and get back to Norfolk, but there are no vacancies in my chosen field of Learning Disability, so I have to look elsewhere in the country.

I spot an advert for a Community Care Post in Esher, Surrey. It sounds perfect. So I apply. I am offered an interview, my first ever proper interview, so my mum and I travel down to Surrey. The interview goes well, there were only 2 candidates, but I’m convinced they will offer it to the other young man. We all had lunch together and he was much more outgoing. However, later that night I receive a call from the Director offering ME the job. I was over the moon. My first interview gained me my first proper job!!

Then the panic set in, I knew nothing about surrey, I knew no one in Surrey. Why was I going to a place where I’d be totally alone? I should try for a job where I knew people. But then I thought of JK, it’d been several years since our last contact but I still had her parents address. I wrote to her. Within a week I had a reply from JK herself. She was still living in Epsom , in her own flat now, but still going out with PT and they were getting married in September. She was delighted to hear from me and told me to ring her as soon as I arrived in Surrey and we would meet up. I’d never met her before, but I’d had several photos over the years.

August 1984 My parents helped me move from Leeds down to Surrey. The Council provided me with a little old house in Ham near Richmond Park. Then I was on my own.
Ham House NT

I rang JK and she asked me to come over on Saturday for evening, which I did. We got on like a house on fire, then I met PT too and he was so lovely and funny, I could see why she loved him. I stayed over and the next day we went to Camber Sands, it was a hot, hot, day and I got sunburnt. Back in Epsom PT cooked us a Roast and then his friend Stan turned up to go for a drink with PT. I didn’t take much notice of him to start with, but I needed his assistance quite soon afterwards.

Stan did car repairs and shortly after arriving in Surrey I had a minor collision damaging my front bumper. PT told me that Stan could repair it for me. PT and Stan were best friends. Stan was to be PT’s Best Man at their wedding which was only a few weeks away.

JK and I were by now firm friends and she suddenly asked me if I’d be her bridesmaid, one of her so called friends had suddenly dropped out and she was stuck. So I agreed.
It was all a bit of a rush because I was being bridesmaid to another friend the week before in Norfolk. But I managed to get to the rehearsal taking my boyfriend from Leeds with me, who’d come down to see me to celebrate my birthday. I’d already decided there was no point in continuing the relationship. His life was in Leeds and that was another lifetime. After the rehearsal we all went for a drink I found myself chatting to Stan thinking what a witty, chatty person he was.

At the wedding itself I spent most f the day with Stan and another his friend’s AK, who I must admit was gorgeous, but out of my league. At the wedding I met Stan’s parents, his dad danced with me. Stan attempted to dance with me too, but was rather the worse for wear for drink, but as we were leaving he asked if he could take me out the following week. I agreed and gave him my number.

I think it was only Monday evening when the phone rang, it was Stan asking me out for a drink Saturday evening. Saturday evening arrived and Stan turned up in his old blue escort van and we went into Richmond. He spent to evening telling me all sorts of funny stories and I was smitten. There ensued the beginnings of our courtship. So that was how I met my other half.

I received the weirdest of proposals, if you could call it a proposal, but that is another story and I’ve already written far too much! So I’ll save that story for another day.

Though, isn’t Fate strange? A chance response to a Pen pal advert lead to the most important relationship in my life.