In more civilised days we might have appeared

on Wilfred Pickles’ radio show

‘Have A Go!’ and when he asked our age

and we told him he would say, ‘Seventy five,

ladies and gentlemen!’ and they would applaud,

and, before he asked ‘What’s on the table, Mable?’

and instructed ‘Give them the money, Barney!’,

he would ask how long we had been married –

more applause – and then he would ask us,

in his warm, BBC Yorkshire voice,

for the secret of our years of wedded bliss.

Now, would we have said, ‘Many a cross word,

mutual disrespect, satire, irony,

and a shared appetite for strong spirits!’

or merely told the truth? We have been

lucky. Love defines us.

Note: first published on Facebook July 7th 2018