One of the nicest days of my life – 51 weeks to go

So, this week I thought I’d blog about one of the nicest days of my entire, whole life (no, serious guys – it’s right up there with the day I met Dawn French, the first time I tried mozzarella in carozza, and significantly better than the first time I listened to The Archers).

The day The Boy proposed, I did guess (eventually) something might be up. We were in Canterbury, one of my favourite places in the whole wide world (where I went to university, where I properly fell in love with history and old buildings, where I discovered Nando’s), and staying in one of my very favourite old buildings (a lovely B&B called House of St. Agnes, which I’d walked past regularly during my five years at uni but never had a reason to go into, having a perfectly serviceable bed, and indeed, breakfast, of my very own not two miles away), and he kept asking me if everything was ok as we wandered around the city, approximately every 46 seconds. To which I replied, “Yes, but I’m ruddy freezing”. I’ve never been the quickest on the uptake. Eventually, the tension clearly got too much for him, and he asked me if I wanted to go back to our room and defrost.

I very much wanted to go back to our room and defrost.

When we got there, he mentioned that he had a present for me. He’d hinted about it a couple of days before…writing this down means that a lot of stuff is starting to make sense (the mysterious trips to ‘town’, the fact he asked for my sizes for everything – hats, socks, rings – the friend who said ‘I reckon you’ll get engaged soon, probably in Canterbury’…) – I really should have guessed something was up).

Anyway, he handed me a copy of the magazine he edits. Wanting to be polite, I opened the cover-wrap (you know when your favourite magazine has a special cover that’s advertising a product, with the real cover underneath? That special cover is called a cover wrap. I know – every day’s a school day), and inside was a magazine called ‘The Carrie-Ann Times’. A title I assume he chose because that is my name.

That’s when I guessed something might be going on.

I later found out he had persuaded one of the (lovely) designers he works with to work on the magazine design, and had spent several months asking my friends and family to write articles (telling them it was a ‘Christmas surprise’. A surprisingly large number of the aforementioned family members and friends fell for this), which he had then edited. I now feel a bit guilty about all the complaining I did during those several months when he stayed up ‘working’ while I went to bed.

I opened the first page, and inside was a lovely article talking about how we met (at secondary school, in drama class. Having seen me at my luvviest, I am surprised he even gave me the time of day when we got back in touch nine years later, let alone invited me for coffee), how we are together, and all manner of lovely stuff, offset by a nice photo of the two of us grinning at the camera.

Which I didn’t even glance at, because the title of the article was ‘Carrie-Ann, will you marry me?’. Instead, I squealed, said yes roughly 37 times, and threw myself at him. Which was awkward, because he was on one knee at the time.

Not only was it one of the nicest days of my life, but it was also one of the nicest things anyone has ever done for me (including the person who introduced me to mozzarella in carozza).

So, there you have it; that’s the story of how The Boy proposed, and I think it’s rather wonderful (although – don’t tell him – he could probably have thrust the ring at me and said ‘You can put that on if you like’, and I’d still think it was rather wonderful).

But enough about me – who wants to go next and tell their proposal story? I bet it’s a good one….