"You do realize that about twenty years ago we started staying in together", my wife said.
We don't, as a couple, pay too much attention to dates, [neither of us can remember when we got married] so this threw me a bit; she was being cheeky. I agreed; ie pretended to remember, then she took it too far, "so where are my flowers? You forget everything!" I flipped...
"I remember the first time I saw you, in that hotel that no longer exists. You were wearing a black shift dress, one of your dad's white cotton shirts buttoned all the way up, pink shin length socks folded down over your brown leather pixie boots. Your hair was straight and back combed. Your make-up was much the same as it is tonight except that your eye-shadow was bronze-brown and your lipstick was an off-scarlet..."
"It was the 13th of November, I'd been playing chess in Aberdeen, I was reading a book about the Sveshnikov...in fact, to this day, I can't see that opening without thinking of you..."
"What ear-rings was I wearing?" Trick question [she had a single black stud in her right ear].
"Do you remember what I was wearing?", I asked. Of course she didn't.
My life is a catalogue of regrets, but every time I think about how it might have been better I run into a huge problem—I might not have met my Tish. I'd put up with a much-much-much worse life if you threatened to take her away from me. It's more than that: there isn't a thing in the universe that you could give me that fills a Tish shaped hole. Love is a sodding nuisance but it's good that it's there.
Still, she should have remembered that I was wearing a Hawian shirt...it was bright yellow and featured pineapples