April is a big month in our house – there are two family birthdays and one wedding anniversary. In 2025, I reflect on the things that help people stay married.
April 9, 1995 started out windy and blustery – and then at about 5pm the wind died down and the day turned: we had a glorious golden Cape Town evening.
I know that because it was the day I got married. Thirty years later, I’m still married, to the same person, living in the same city with the same unreliable weather.
Some things are different though: we’re a lot older. We have a son between us, and look on Bob’s two sons by previous relationships as part of our big, slightly complicated family. We’ve moved house once in those years of marriage, from the excitement of the inner city to the staid backwaters of the suburbs. We used to have cats; for years now, we’ve added a dog to the menagerie. For both of us, parents have died, friends have moved away, family bonds have changed and been broken and sometimes restored.
I’m not going to pretend we have a perfect marriage, but it endures. Here are some of the reasons for that.
1. In the early days, before we were married, we went camping. And discovered that we had somehow left the duvet behind. A cold night lay ahead. We made a fire, drank some wine and made a plan with what we had (an odd assortment of coats and jackets as I remember it). The key thing: we did not fall to blaming each other, to trying to figure out whose fault it was that the duvet was still at home. We just got on with finding a way to deal with things, and we’ve carried on in that tradition ever since.
2. We share the same interests. We love reading and we love a slightly down-at-heel pub. We love science fiction, and if an alien landed in the back garden and asked us to fly away with them, we’d both go in a heartbeat. These things have never changed, and will never change.
3. We have similar backgrounds in that we are both from English-speaking families with a shared cultural heritage (we both spent time at school learning about the works of Shakespeare, for instance). We are both the oldest of three children. We have both either worked in journalism (me) or hung around with journalists a lot (Bob). In the early days of our relationship, we were both, in our different ways, on the side of people who thought the apartheid regime should be brought to the ground. And we are both glad, still, to be living in the South Africa that survived the horror.
4. But there are differences: Bob was born in London in the UK, I was born in Johannesburg in South Africa. Bob was a hellraiser in his youth; I tried a bit but am at heart always “a good girl”. Bob tends to get things done when the deadline leaps up and hits him in the face; I make lists and plan a lot.
5. We both know one important rule: don’t sweat the small stuff (and it’s all small stuff). Of course, it’s not really all small stuff, but lots of the things that seem important just aren’t worth getting upset about.
Essentially though, we share worldviews and a sense of humour. The night we both realised something was brewing, I had gone to Bob’s flat with our late, much lamented friend Ronnie Morris. Over drinks, we discovered we both knew whole passages of text from the Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. It’s a rare thing to find someone who understand exactly why it’s important to know where your towel is at all times.
For non-readers of the greatest trilogy ever to spread across four books, here’s what you need to know about towels – it’s a long quote but irresistible:
A towel… is about the most massively useful thing an interstellar hitch hiker can have. Partly it has great practical value – you can wrap it around you for warmth as you bound across the cold moons of Jaglan Beta; you can lie on it on the brilliant marble-sanded beaches of Santraginus V, inhaling the heady sea vapours; you can sleep under it beneath the stars which shine so redly on the desert world of Kakrafoon; use it to sail a mini raft down the slow heavy river Moth; wet it for use in hand-to- hand-combat; wrap it round your head to ward off noxious fumes or to avoid the gaze of the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal (a mindboggingly stupid animal, it assumes that if you can’t see it, it can’t see you – daft as a brush, but very ravenous); you can wave your towel in emergencies as a distress signal, and of course dry yourself off with it if it still seems to be clean enough.
More importantly, a towel has immense psychological value. For some reason, if a strag (strag: non-hitch hiker) discovers that a hitch hiker has his towel with him, he will automatically assume that he is also in possession of a toothbrush, face flannel, soap, tin of biscuits, flask, compass, map, ball of string, gnat spray, wet weather gear, space suit etc., etc. Furthermore, the strag will then happily lend the hitch hiker any of these or a dozen other items that the hitch hiker might accidentally have ‘lost’. What the strag will think is that any man who can hitch the length and breadth of the galaxy, rough it, slum it, struggle against terrible odds, win through, and still knows where his towel is is clearly a man to be reckoned with.”
After our mutual admiration of Douglas Adams had been discovered, I went home in a thoughtful frame of mind.
The next morning, I phoned another mutual friend, Di Cassere, and asked her to tell me about Bob. I was on the rebound from another relationship, and so was Bob, but I knew that something was up. “Bob?”said Di. “There’s something rather fine about Bob.”
Two or so years later we were married in Di and her husband’s Tony’s back garden.
And now, if asked at a cocktail party what the secret is to staying married, I have always got only one thing to say: marry your best friend.
And always know where you keep the towels, and where the duvet is.
Picture: Taken at our wedding. From left, me, Ronnie Morris, Di Cassere and Bob Seddon.
OTHER THINGS I HAVE WRITTEN
The simple joys of camping – There is something to be said for unhooking oneself from daily rituals.
What would you do if the aliens landed in your garden? – It’s a thought experiment: aliens land in the garden and invite you to fly away with them. But you can’t come back. Do you go or do you stay home?
Four pubs I have loved and lost – In a long life, some of my happiest times have been spent in pubs. Here’s a tribute to four that I miss to this day…
How can I help you make order from chaos?
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