As I was walking across campus yesterday, looking at all the shiny happy faces of this year’s fresher intake (aged approximately fourteen), I realised it’s ten years this year since Quercus and I met. We were both going into our second year as undergraduates, and, for reasons which shall remain nameless, had opted to live in the soul-destroying self-catering apartments on offer at the back end of the university. (They’re at the back end for that very reason – even walking near those buildings, one risks succumbing to deep depression, and, believe me, the carpet choices (orange, fuzzy, prone to pilling) do little to improve one’s mood over the academic year, while the only appealing accommodation they afford is for the spiders who can fit themselves into the crevices between the unplastered breeze blocks which make up the walls.) Our official first-date anniversary is November 13, but it’s been sort of outshone by our wedding anniversary, only a few days later on November 19; I think we actually met on September 26.

The first time we met I was en route to Cornwall for a day-trip with a friend who lived upstairs, and Quercus was unloading an improbably large quantity of improbably large stereo equipment from an improbably small van. He says his impression was of something blonde, terrifying and talking far too fast scuttling past him; I thought he was interesting, in part because I’d had a feeling about him before we actually met. I knew pretty soon that he was going to be at the very least significant for me; our second conversation, which took place in the desultory kitchen and common room, was about Vaughan Williams, Debussy and Arnold Bax, and shortly afterwards he was delighted when I whistled ‘Song for my Father’ by Horace Silver. It was the first time I’d encountered someone who shared the same sort of interest in music, or had similarly bizarre tastes. About four weeks later, we went to the Double Locks fireworks party; I had had a bad dose of bronchitis and was feeling pretty grim, but when he asked, there was no way I wasn’t going.

By this time, we were in that exhilarating stage of will-we-won’t-we; we’d been spending increasingly large chunks of time together, and I could see that, if he was the person I thought he was, it could Really Work, As In Longer-Term. We’d had one excruciating late-night conversation where, lounging in my doorway, he’d verbalised his reasoning over some of my behaviour, coming to the conclusion that ‘well, that must mean that you like me’; I hadn’t denied it, so when he asked, a few days later, about this fireworks party, I felt certain that it was kind of now or never. We spent most of the evening with his friends, a little ahead of them for most of the few miles it took to get there, and just as I began to wonder if I’d got my wires not just crossed but knitted, I realised we’d ended up on our own again, and he turned to me and asked if it would be alright if he held my hand. We were both shaking; I was so nervous that I felt sure he could hear my heart thumping. By the end of that week, we were an established thing; I only realised then that we’d been the subject of a good bit of gossip for our flatmates, who were splendidly unsurprised at our union.

So, a decade on, and I still find myself smiling involuntarily when he smiles, still laugh when he tells me he has me in his evil clutches and gearboxes. I find myself in the happy position of being deeply, abidingly, stupidly, in love with my husband.

(I would put a picture of him up, but I think he might demur.)