Thursday 3rd November 2005
Valentine's Day

Today I found a bundle of red paper hearts and I remembered Valentine's Day 2003. I came downstairs first thing that morning, and opened the door to the lounge to find the floor was literally COVERED in cut-out red paper hearts! A card was on the table, and later that day, in Morrison's car park Ian presented me with a lovely pair of diamond earrings, assuring me, "they ARE real, you know!" I thought he surely couldn't top that, but the following year, 2004, on Valentine's Day I came down to find my card with a gift on the table that morning. It was a matching diamond ring!!!
All this from a guy who insisted Valentine's Day was too commercial, and he would say, "I DON'T need a day to be romantic...I can be romantic ANY day of the year....Valentine's Day is a RIP OFF!"

I think Ian must have had a thing about supermarket car parks - he did actually propose to me in Tesco's car park, Kettering, but that's another story...
 

The Proposal

I can remember a conversation we had about getting engaged, taking our relationship to the next stage. We were sat in the car in Tesco's car park, Kettering. Ian would joke after that he proposed to me in Tesco's car park, but he insisted he could even remember the exact car park space, aisle, number, and everything. We said a few times we should go back there! He did actually go down on one knee and propose, but this was sometime later, in a Chinese Restaurant in Chinatown, Manchester, while we were attending a convention nearby, late 1995.
 

Friday 4th November 2005
"These aren't ALL for me!"

Ian took great delight in sending me to get ice creams, or McFlurry's, and then would take a photo of me with one in each hand (as if to say they were all for me) (or three if my Dad was there too)! This happened many times, L.A. Citywalk, Paris, Legoland, and I have the photos to prove it!

"Best Friends"

I was talking to a friend of mine at work, Rebecca, telling her about how so many of Ian's friends regarded Ian as their "best friend", and the number of times I had said, "Mine too," because Ian was MY best friend too. I told her how we had decided that Ian was everyone's "best friend". Rebecca, very sensitively (for someone who did not have the privilege of knowing Ian personally) pointed out that so many more hours of Ian's day he spent his time on making his friends feel special. The rest of us, tied up with work / whatever, how much time do we spend, answering a friend's email, for example? This goes back to what Mandy said in her tribute, "Ian the friend who always had time for you. Time, the most precious gift anyone can give."
 

Sunday 6th November 2005
"I don't know"

We were watching Springwatch, earlier in the year, and the woman presenter on there was mimicking the call of the collared dove, it sounds like: "I don't know, I don't know, I don't know!" We would both do this in the garden when the collared doves were around, before dissolving into fits of hysterical laughter. Also, the call of the yellowhammer, "a little bit of bread and some Cheeeeeeeeeeeese!" We were lucky enough to see a yellowhammer at Pitsford Reservoir and its call did sound like that.

The Guest Who Wouldn't Leave

When I first met Ian, I was staying in a house in Bury, Lancs, in Far Croft Avenue that had been provided as relocation help by my new employers up there. He came back with me after I met him in Manchester, and every day for nearly a week, I would go out to work in the morning, and he would say he was going home today, and he would go out and lock the door behind him. I would come home to find he was still there! This went on for three or four more days. Not that I felt uncomfortable in any way of course, but you have to remember at this time we had only just met - I hardly even knew this guy who was staying in my house! I must have trusted him!
 

Monday 7th November 2005
"Love of My Life"

In both of our email lists, the name we used to refer to each other was, instead of our first name and surname, simply the words "Love of My Life", so that would come up on emails we would send to each other. This evening I was looking through my contacts lists while sending some emails, and my eyes came to rest on the words "Love of My Life". The spooky thing was.....at that instant in time the song playing on my CD player was entitled "Love of My Life."
 

Wednesday 9th November 2005
"Millionaires for a Day"

In October 1994 we went to Rhodes for a week. While we were there, we took a day trip to Turkey, by Hydrofoil. The trip was to a town called Marmaris. We changed our last £50.00 traveller's cheque into Turkish Lira and we got 2,000,000 (2 million) of them. It was 40,000 lira to the £1. Ian joked that we were millionaires for the day! We had a really lovely day, eating shish kebabs in a restaurant, coming back with £10 worth of fantastic, authentic Turkish Delight and two carpets / wall hangings. On the way home, as we were returning from the airport on the shuttle bus, this other couple were talking with their friends about how they or someone they knew had been to Turkey. They said the name of the place was, "Marmaris or something!" They said they thought it was a horrible place, "just like Blackpool!" We were surprised but amused by this as we had thought it was rather nice! Maybe those people were just snobs! Yeah, we didn't mind Blackpool, either!
 

Thursday 10th November 2005
Our Boating Weekend

One summer a few years ago, we spent a long weekend on a boat on the Norfolk Broads with Tim and Kirsty. We had the BEST time, floating along, relaxing, watching the riverbanks sail by was idyllic, and sharing a portable barbecue with our friends was great fun on the first day. On the Sunday, the weather turned cooler and indeed it rained, but undaunted, Ian, Tim and I ventured out to look some ruins. We arrived back at the boat to find that Kirsty had put the heater on inside the cabin, and had made us a plate of Nachos, ready for us to eat and enjoy.
 

Friday 11th November 2005
"Liquorice Drill Bits"

I was often on the receiving end of Ian's great sense of humour and enjoyment of winding people up. One Christmas I picked up a little stocking filler gift of some drill bits for him, they were in a set from Wilkos, and while they were quite cheap, I had no idea of the quality or otherwise, I just thought they would be a useful gift. Ian attempted to use one of these drill bits several weeks later, and the metal they were made of was so soft....it actually uncoiled itself instead of drilling a hole in the wood. It was a funny sight when Ian showed the drill bit to me, later. He said it looked as if it were made of liquorice, and so from then on, I never lived that one down - he would often joke about the "liquorice drill bits!" He told me not to buy him tools or accessories as gifts from now on, because I clearly had no idea about what was quality in the way of tools!
 

Saturday 12th November 2005
My Surprise Day Off

Ian happened to say one day, it would be really cool if I took a day off work as holiday, but didn't tell him, so it would be a surprise! I could just casually announce that morning that I didn't have to go to work, after he would be thinking I did, and that would be a nice surprise and we could go off somewhere and do something special. I said, "But now you've suggested it, it won't be a surprise, will it?" Nevertheless, I had to book a day off for his hospital appointment, on Thursday 8th September. I decided I would not want to go back to work just for the Friday, and so I booked the Friday off as well, but I kept it a secret. I kept waiting and waiting for Ian to say something so I could tell him, but he never said anything about it, until when we were driving home, late on Thursday night. Then he suddenly said, "Oh, I wish you didn't have to go to work tomorrow, why couldn't you have booked the Friday off?" And so I thought, finally, here is the perfect moment to bring this up! I said, "well, actually, I don't have to go to work tomorrow, I booked a surprise day off like you suggested the other week, and I can't believe it, I have been waiting all this time for you to say something so I could tell you!" He was thrilled! He couldn't believe it. "Seriously?" he kept saying. And so that is how we came to have a lovely day out at Avoncroft on the Friday. We spent the day looking at the National Phone Box Collection, complete with real Tardis, that Ian had wanted to go and see for so long. They had a working telephone exchange there, and you could go inside and see all the workings of it, and Ian was utterly fascinated, he was asking the guy working there loads of questions about how it worked, and the wiring and everything. We looked around all the other historical buildings on the site, and finally spent some time with two donkeys who live there, and again Ian was asking the gentleman looking after them loads of questions. We both thoroughly enjoyed the day.
 

Sunday 13th November 2005
Photo Opportunities

I lost count of the number of times Ian would make me stand next to something to take a photo. In Berlin, the city's mascot was a bear, and there were many statues of bears around the city, painted in various different ways. In Edinburgh we found a man-sized teddy bear, and I had my photo taken next to many other statues. In Nottingham, there is a statue of Robin Hood beneath Nottingham Castle. Ian made me stand there while he took a photo, and I had to pose as if holding an imaginary bow and arrow just like the statue. A group of Japanese tourists were there and they also took my photo, and Ian said he thought they probably saying, "Ha, look, Maid Marian!"

Earthquakes?

When we visited Tony and Nick in Los Angeles in 1999, we stayed in Tony's apartment, on a sofabed. Tony joked that he would "shake our beds" in the night to make us think it was an earthquake!
 

Memories

During the rest of November, I was away in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for a much-needed break. It's interesting to consider what can trigger a memory, because away from the familiar surroundings of our home and town where we live, there obviously were very few things to trigger memories. However Ian was still always in my thoughts of course, while I was away. The first night I arrived in K.L., I was talking with Jen on the balcony at the back of their apartment, and she was showing me the Petronas Twin Towers, saying how Ian had been talking to her on MSN one day and had asked her if she had seen the Petronas Towers, which at the time were the World's tallest buildings and Ian loved tall buildings. She had said to him, "Seen them? Darling, I can see them now as I talk to you, I am looking right at them from our apartment window!" (They are in central Kuala Lumpur). There were a few tears that night as we agreed how Ian would have loved to have seen these buildings (I bet he would not have gone up them, though, he would have sent me up there like he always did!)
On Tuesday 22nd November we watched the movie, Hitch. What an uplifting film! It contains some great lines. "Life is not the amount of breaths you take. It's the moments that take your breath away." I believe Ian and I had many of those moments.
 

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