I don’t know what Sigmund Freud would have made of it…

I was trudging up a long and steep hill, and, most peculiarly, I was wearing Chris’s bright blue plastic sandals, having opted to wear his rather than my own bright yellow plastic sandals. Disturbingly, Chris took umbrage with me for wearing his blue sandals and he walked past with a group of young women. I couldn’t catch up because I was so weary. Then suddenly I was in a shower-block, like those on campsites, and every door was shut to me because the women with Chris had taken them all first. It was terribly distressing…

Just as I was feeling my most wretched I heard a sound beside my right ear and I opened my eyes to see primroses on my bedside table.

“Happy nineteenth anniversary!” Chris said. “I had to search high and low for the primroses – they were early this year!”

He had been out before six in the morning on the hunt for the pretty yellow flowers that were so abundant when we married on the birthday of my dad and also my friend Sally – two days before Primrose Day.

Whilst I was still lying down, and adjusting from dream to reality, Chris assured me that he would never be upset if I wore his sandals but he would be surprised because he doesn’t have any blue plastic sandals and anyway, he takes a size 11 and I wear a puny (by comparison) size 8! And to prove that he would never go off with other women he proceeded to read me the poem he had written in anticipation of our anniversary morning rather than a bad dream…

NINETEEN