In September, '73, I left home and started work, doing a "co-op" degree course where you work for a firm full time and they send you to college 6 months a year. On the very first morning in the reception area of the new company a dozen of us new student apprentices gathered. There I met DW2B, Irene, who not only was to be working at the same firm but also attending the same university. I remember seeing a guy called Nigel who I had met twice before at university interviews so I was quite relieved to find someone to talk. Much later Nigel told me that he had the opposite reaction when he saw me walk in. His reaction was "Oh no, there's that loud Geordie that talks to me, and I don't understand a single word he is saying"
Irene is from the north (Manchester) and she seemed to be able understand me so I chatted with her as well that morning. I don't recall this but Irene tells me that while we were talking it turned out that we were living quite close to one another, and I said that I had walked to work that day. Since she had taken a bus she asked me how far it was to walk. She said that she understood the words in my reply but was still not sure, as I said, "Why, it's a canny way man!", and she wasn't if canny meant short or long. (She decided that it meant long, which in this case was correct).
We became friends but it wasn't until the following Easter break that we actually started dating. (I'd had another very embarrassing dating experience before then, the story of which was relayed to her but didn't put her off me
). Apparently she had wanted to date me from that first day and eventually had to practically trip me up and throw herself under me to get it to happen
We still celebrate that first day at work where we met instead of our wedding day.
A couple of months after we'd started dating there was to be a big party at her parents' house for the extended family as it was to be a 100 year celebration. Her older sister was to be 20 and her Granddad 80. (Irene was 18 and I was 19).
We arrived at her parents on the Friday, party on the Saturday. I was determined to be on best behavior and her folks made me really welcome, and I seemed to fit in very well. I'd already met her sister and her boyfriend when they'd visited her some weeks earlier, plus my accent was now much modified and I was almost intelligible. She also had an 8 year old brother and a 4 year old sister and while I was larking about with her brother he took a tumble onto the carpeted floor (I was holding his foot at the time, so no doubt as to where the blame lay
). He moaned and cried and said his elbow really hurt. I carefully examined him and told him it wasn't broken, demonstrated by the way I could bend and flex it. Anyway, as soon as her parents got back in from work he wailed to them, so they took him off to the Emergency Room.
When they came back a couple of hours later he was sporting a plaster cast and staring daggers at me. (his elbow had a hairline fracture).
Her parents were very understanding and despite all the scowls from little brother I made it through the next day, helping with the preparations for the big party in the evening which included close family friends, Aunts and Uncles. All went well until they played party games and one of the games was a word game where you randomly got given letters and had to fill in a small crossword style grid. Now, I'm useless at this sort of thing but did my best. Then, horror of horrors, we were told to pass the completed grid to the person on your left for scoring. Luckily for me it was Irene because I had filled in my grid with some pretty unsavory words that I was certain would shock her family. Even worse, when the scoring was done, I had won and Irene was told to read out my answers
She didn't actually say any of the words but said things like "Couldn't you have used the word 'shot', and couldn't you have used the word 'fort', and what is wrong with 'bagger' instead of what you actually put?"
Fortunately everyone laughed (I know that I was beetroot red with embarrassment), and I have had a fantastic relationship with all her family from that very first meeting.
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