D’ya hear yer man

On Friday Karen and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary.

When it comes to special occasions, wedding anniversaries are a gift for men who have difficulty buying presents. At birthdays and at Christmas you have to give a lot of thought as to what to buy for a loved one. This is not the case with wedding anniversaries.

Each anniversary has its own unique name which in itself offers guidance on what gift to buy. For example the 1st anniversary is Paper so all you have to do is remember to get a card. The 15th anniversary is Crystal therefore some cut glass should be just the ticket. For the 40th Ruby anniversary a ruby ring or slipper would be a safe bet. The beauty of it is the gift doesn’t even have to be that good, just the fact you’ve adhered to tradition is enough to make it a romantic gesture.

There’s another reason why wedding anniversary are the creme de la creme of anniversaries. If, like myself, you are OCD about the naming convention of special occasions, then wedding anniversaries will tick all your boxes.

A wedding anniversary is the anniversary of your wedding day. When you’ve been married a year you’ll celebrate your first wedding anniversary, if you make it to two years it will be your second wedding anniversary, and so on. To me, this makes incontrovertible sense.

Sense goes out the window when it comes to another special occasion that we celebrate the anniversary of on a yearly basis - birthdays.

Birthdays should not be called birthdays. Your birth day is the day of your birth. Each subsequent anniversary of that event cannot and should not be called the same thing as the event itself, albeit without the space.

As birth day already refers to the day of our birth, clearly a different term is needed to classify each subsequent anniversary of the day we entered the world. For me, ‘birth anniversary’ is the obvious frontrunner to correct the long-standing mistake.

I’ve tried it a few times when people ask me what age I am, but when I tell them I’ll be celebrating my 36th birth anniversary in September they screw their faces up at my terminology.

The problem with society today is more emphasis is put on what sounds right as to what actually is right. Like when you spell something out of a dictionary for someone and they say, ‘Fair enough, but it doesn’t sound right.’

For our wedding anniversary Karen bought me a big block of wood to attach to my keys to stop me losing them. Doesn’t sound right, does it.

But it does make sense given that the fifth wedding anniversary is traditional marked by exchanging wooden gifts.

Our wood-based agenda for the day was supposed to involve going for a walk in a forest and carving a heart containing our initials into a tree, but our plans were scuppered by the snow. On reflection it was appropriate that the elements conspired to foil an act of environmental vandalism in the name of love.

Between the snow storms we made it out to Balloo House for a nice lunch. Upon returning home and after getting Lucy to bed I lit the fire and we settled down for a cosy evening in front of the telly. That’s when I broke the news to Karen that my beloved Leicester City were live on Sky.

In keeping with the wooden theme she called me a plank. She called me plenty of other things as well but plank was the only one I could print.

Tracksuited and booted

On Monday, for the first time in living memory, I wore a tracksuit in the office. I wasn’t being lazy, I was wearing it for practical reasons because I was doing a story in a leisure centre that day.

While I looked the part in the leisure centre I looked like a young offender in the office. However, despite making me look uncouth and garnering disrespectful looks, wearing the tracksuit to work give me an incredible sense of comfort and liberation.

After my experience I decided I’d like a job where I could have the best of both worlds. I wanted to be able to wear a tracksuit whilst simultaneously commanding respect and being able to order people in shirts and ties to do my bidding.

And then it dawned on me. As of this week I’ll be scouring the job ads for a vacancy as a PE teacher.

Weekly teaser

The answer to last week’s teaser was: they adults are queueing with their children to have their photo taken with Santa.

Here’s this week’s puzzle: you are being chased by a rabid dog. Up ahead you see a forest. How far can you run into the forest?