Flowers, chocolate, edible body paint (I always thought this was a phase people went through in their early 20's and then moved past once realising it's not all that...apparently not) all form part of a new romance. But now that I am a man of some years' marriage, what constitutes romance is something quite different.
The fact that whoever gets up first makes tea for both, is right up there in the romantic stakes. I would take that over a love letter (or worse, a poem) any day.
Myself and Mrs Van are both off work at the moment (don't worry, at least one of the people on this blog actually work...that would be AnnaK yet to grace us with her wit: fund my pension, biartch!) so we are spending a lot of time together. We had our kitchen refurbed too and so that meant the house was a mess, we were eating dinner in the bedroom and cooking it in the living room etc. Tempers frayed. The cabin fever kicked in (being of ethnic origin, it is my genetic disposition to watch workmen in my house like a hawk, thus not really leaving the house except for short periods at a time).
I thought some old-style swooning romantic gesture might break the domestic hell. A dinner at one of Gordon Ramsay's Restaurants was booked (we had a gift voucher to use up there, I would never choose it myself, even before the minimal cost vacuum-sealed food parcel story came out).
So we hike to the West End, the three of us (there's a baby on the scene btw), and then sat to eat the usual style of dinner at these places (big plate, tiny serve; mandatory stop for fast food on way home). And though the setting was right, the candles were lit, and we were reasonably dressed, it didn't flick any switches for us.
What became apparent is that as you grow even more intimate as you fall in love, you reach a level of connection where things like expensive dinners, flowers, chocolate etc are almost on the periphery of the bond shared between the two of you. Sure they break up the pattern of life every now and again but as we rode home, we both concluded that we could have stayed at home in our normal clothes, in our normal mode, taking the piss out of crap tv as we often do, or watching not-meant-to-be-hilarious-but-they-are videos on youtube, and that would have been bliss.
I did get the cab to pull over as I ran out and grabbed some fast food since we were both starving- and I knew exactly what Mrs Van wanted without even asking. I could tell she was impressed when I got back in the cab...Gaga-Ooh-la-la.
