14 February 2019 - Heartathon

Valentines Day - our special day since I met up again with my husband on my 18th birthday. We had known each other since our school days in today's Zambia - my boyfriend was a friend of his and his girlfriend was a friend of mine and we all belonged to one happy crowd of what today would be called teenagers.  He left school and moved to Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) to join the British South Africa Police and my parents were transferred to Salisbury (Harare) just as I was leaving school two years later.  I attended the local polytechnic to do a secretarial course.  Come my 18th birthday I had quite a few girl friends but knew very few boys.  I remembered that he and two friends had joined the police so no problem my mother sent invitations to them c/o police headquarters.  He tells me that his Officer in Charge called him in to his office to say orders from HQ - he had a birthday party he had to attend!!  Only my mother would do it that way!!  The other two school friends were stationed in other parts of the country. 

He rang to confirm he would be coming and I asked him to bring more police friends with him.  Come the evening of the party he arrived, alone. I did not even let him in, I just asked where his promised friends were and sent him back to his police station the other side of the city to come back with more guys!!  Amazingly he did, we went on our first date the next day........and the rest is history. So now, 57 Valentine's Days later, we have been married for 55 years this year.

I bought this card after we had been married about 6 or so years.  We then started a tradition of using the same card each year, with a single heart representing each year.  I did add extra hearts at the time to make the record correct.  So each February it comes out with a lovely bunch of red roses and a we have special dinner that night.