Unexpected Utterances

Philippa kissed me this morning and said “It’s 45 days til our wedding!”
I love her and I can’t wait to be her husband, but every time she does something like that I get a rush of panic and feel like I’m going to throw up.
Nerves are weird, aren’t they?
Luckily we had a day at Ted and Beryl’s so I had the opportunity to be looked after and fed and to forget about our looming nuptials. Or so I thought…… But Beryl, being the ‘eternal maternal’ soul that she is, couldn’t stop going on about it and talked of little else. Thankfully Ted understood how I was feeling and dragged me off to the other room for a game of chess ‘just to get a break from her waffling.’
I used to play lots of games with Ted and I only realised today how much I’ve missed it. He’s great company, and hugely competitive, so as long as you let him win everything you tend to have a good laugh. When it comes to chess, ‘letting him win’ is a bit of a moot statement, as he normally kicks my arse within ten minutes anyway. He may be getting older and frailer by the day, but his mind is still as sharp as a sabre. His shaky hands struggle to move the pieces on the board, but the brain that decides what those moves will be hasn’t diminished in the slightest.
He still torments Beryl as well. But he is also capable of some heart-warming moments of tenderness and devotion. When I shared with him that I keep feeling sick with nerves he said “Every groom feels like that. I felt like that every second for months before Beryl finally dragged me into the church. The morning of the wedding I would have done anything and gone anywhere to avoid going through the damned service. But think what I would have missed out on if I had. Beryl’s a pain in the arse at times, but I wouldn’t be worth an aardvark’s fart without her.”
That may sound odd to you, but if you knew Ted you’d know that’s about as good a compliment as he can give. 
45 days to go…. Blimey……

RC 8-11-15