Part 6c. Married, just. Our Wedding Day white out.

I would like to dedicate this post to Oakley Alderman. He popped into the world on 2nd July 2011.

One day maybe - just maybe - he might read this blog. If he does and if he reads my previous story (right here) he'll need to be told that it's really his story. Not mine. Or Dale's.

Dale hadn't had a miscarriage. In very rare cases a pregnant woman can bleed profusely. The bleeding is actually from outside the womb. The best medical minds don't really know the cause - they think it's got something to do with scar tissue. Perhaps from previous births. It's painful, but relatively harmless. When it happens everyone thinks it's a miscarriage. We did. So did the paramedics. Poor old Tony, Dale's husband, still did!

It wasn't. I've never in my entire 42 years of inexperience witnessed a complete reversal of emotions quite like it. When the specialist said that the baby - Oakley - was just fine, Dale and I went from utter despair to unbridled joy. In two seconds flat. We hugged each other and cried. Everyone thought we were married. Again.

Dale had lost a fair bit of blood, but she was 100% OK too. She called Tony in Florida. We both thought it was best to let him know the good news quite quickly.

We walked out of the hospital arm in arm. Dale was covered in blood, but she was still pregnant. And I had a wedding to prepare for. Mine. It was 6pm on the night before my wedding. And as we jumped into a taxi it was snowing. Heavily.

Back at 'the building site' another minor miracle had occurred. The manager of the hotel obviously realised that this wedding was shaping up to be 'the worst event known to man' and she had taken pity on me and Picky. We were upgraded to the Presidential Suite.

It was the best hotel room I've ever stayed in. Or ever seen. I didn't even know that hotel rooms like it existed. I do now. But I'll never be staying in one again. Not if I'm paying.

That evening - the night before our wedding - we had fish and chips in newspaper around the banquet table in the Dining Room, in the West Wing of the Presidential Suite. We invited Dale, Dale's mum and dad Sylvia and Adrian, Picky's mum and dad (and Pearl) to join us. We washed it down with a few bottles of bubbly.

Picky hadn't had her hair done, or her nails, she was exhausted and stressed. I hadn't done any of the things I'd planned to do that afternoon. I hadn't written my speech or even thought about it. But no matter. Oakley was safe and well ... and inside Dale. And Dale was fine. It was all good. Things were looking up.

Metaphorically speaking at least, there was a little chink of light on the horizon of our wedding.

Not for long there wasn't.

Sat 18th Dec 2010. A nice day for a white wedding? No. Not really.

When I woke up and opened the curtains on Saturday 18th December 2010 - the day of our wedding -  I saw nothing. Nothing. Only whiteness. I expected to see Hyde Park. It had gone. Poof. Just like that. Overnight someone had nicked Hyde Park. Someone had also turned the whole of London white. Snow white.

I turned white. Snow white. And then I turned grumpy.

It had snowed all night. It had snowed for every single minute of the night before our wedding. In fact, it had snowed so much that it was impossible to differentiate between the streets of London and the 'anything else' of London. There were very few cars. Or taxis. In Central London. It was odd and eery. For as far as the eye could see there was nothing. Nothing except fields of snow. Nothing. If a penguin or a walrus had appeared it would have looked completely at home. Global Warming? Not on the day of my marriage to Picky.

It had snowed so much that the people responsible for putting salt on the roads had clearly woken up that morning and thought 'bugger this'. And they had promptly rolled over and gone back to sleep. Salting the roads could wait.

But we couldn't. We were getting married at 2pm.

O no we weren't!

The first person to cancel was Kelly. She was gutted. She was also snowed in. Then my oldest mate in the whole wide world - Chris - let me know that he was going to struggle too. And then there were Picky's friends from Germany. Most had already arrived in London. Emily hadn't. She called to say that she was stuck in Germany. Her flight was delayed. Probably cancelled.

We spent most of the morning of our wedding day on the phone to various guests in various parts of Europe with various tales of winter snow woe. When we were finally ready to go to the Registry Office I hadn't even had time to shave. Picky hadn't had her hair done or her nails. Princess for a day? Yeah, right!

We all crammed into a black London Taxi. We'd left ourselves 90minutes to get to Islington. On a normal day it would take 20mins. Naturally we thought that 90 minutes was cool.

It wasn't.

When we said we were getting married in Islington in 90minutes the London Cabbie laughed. At us. 

When a London Cabby laughs at your travel plans you know you're in trouble. Real trouble. Deep trouble. The trouble we were in was as deep as the snow. And believe me, the snow was deep.

We were more than an hour late for our own wedding. The bride is traditionally a few minutes late. The bride and groom rocking up more than an hour late might well be something of a first.

By the time we got to Islington Registry Office I was ready to throttle anyone and everyone. It was no-one's fault. The poor cabbie had tried everything. He'd driven up main streets and turned around due to the snow. He'd driven down backstreets and then turned around due to the snow. He'd used every cabbie trick in the book. It was a complete and utter nightmare. The streets of London weren't paved with gold. They were icy carnage. It took so long that Picky had to hitch up her wedding gear to breastfeed Pearl in the back of a black cab. That was a certainly a first for the lucky London Cabby!

When we walked into the beautiful Gothic-style Registry Office - the scene of numerous famous weddings down the years - we thought we'd walked into a wedding convention. There were brides and grooms everywhere.

EVERYWHERE!

Ours was supposed to be the last wedding of the day. We had planned it like that so that we would have the place to ourselves.

The place to ourselves? You've got to be kidding. It was busier than Harrods on the first day of the January sales.

The weather meant that all the day's weddings were backed up! People were bloody well queuing to get married. Queuing. It was like Vegas. We'd arrived in Las Vegas, London. All I needed was an Elvis outfit.

At this point I need to say a few words about Picky - my soon-to-be-wife. Over time brides have developed a reputation - perhaps unfairly - for being a right bloody nightmare on their wedding day. I've heard of brides flipping their lid if the napkins aren't folded absolutely perfectly on the table. Or if a guest sneezes during the service. Not Picky. She was right there in a whole world of white wedding hell and yet she kept smiling the whole time. Her wedding was an unmitigated disaster from start to finish - from pre-start to post-finish - but she didn't complain, or cry, or smack me around the head with anything resembling a bouquet. Not once. She did tell me that, after this saga, she thought we'd 'earned' a decent honeymoon.

Instead of the two of us making a majestic entrance into the beautiful marble atrium of Islington Registry Office and up the stunning gothic staircase as we'd planned, Picky and I waited in a tiny meeting room on the 1st floor with our guests - the ones who had managed to make it through the driving snow - for the backlog of weddings to clear. Tick tock, tick tock, chit chat, chat chat.  It wasn't the most romantic hour we'd ever had spent. Stressful yes. Romantic, no.

Eventually, finally, at long last, it was our 'turn'. Better late than never.

The guests wandered out of the small meeting room and into Room 99. Picky and I stayed back. We wanted to make a little bit of 'an entrance'.

We only had a couple of minutes. Ours was the last wedding of the day, things were miles behind schedule and they wanted to mop the floor and close the Town Hall for the weekend. I sat and held Picky's hand. I kissed her and told her that I loved her.

Forever and a day.

She told me that the only way was up after this wedding. I agreed. It was impossible not to.

& then we started laughing.  What else can you do? When you've had the worst wedding experience ever ... but you're marrying the person you love. What else can you do? It's best to laugh it all off and just get on with it.

So we did. We stood up, walked into Room 99 and got on with getting married.

Look out for the final instalment next week.

Pip pip

Part 6b. Friday. The day before 'our big day'. The worst day in living memory.

When I got back to the hotel on the Thursday evening I was drunk. And alone. I was supposed to be sober and with Picky, Pearl and her parents.

I wasn't.

They were fighting their way through 4 feet of snow on a twelve hour trek across Germany.

I stumbled off the train at Kings Cross ... and right at that very moment the entire rail network was declared 'closed'. Just like that. If Picky did make it to Dusseldorf Airport and onto that flight to London the next morning, I wouldn't be taking the train to Stansted to meet her. I was effectively snowed in and London was effectively cut off from the outside world. I'm not sure that the outside world really cared too much, to be honest.

The 'hotel-cum-building-site' said that they could arrange a limousine to take me to Stansted Airport the next morning at 6am (the day before my wedding day). It needed to be a big one limo. If they all actually arrived from Germany there would be three fully grown Germans, Aussie / English bloke, a baby, a pram and heaps of wedding-related luggage.

400 quid.

$600!

That was the price for the massive hotel limo. Cash only. There was a 15% surcharge for credit cards.

Look, in some ways I could see why it was a tad pricey. It was a sort of luxury minibus. With blacked-out windows ... and a free newspaper. That's what you get for $600. Windows that you can't really see out of ... and a free copy of The Times. I hate The Times. Still, I booked it. Through gritted teeth and salty tears. I booked it. I had no choice. There were no trains.

When the four Pichs emerged from Immigration into Arrivals the next morning at 8.00am they looked like they'd just walked out of an all-night rave. They were utterly exhausted. They'd taken buses and trains, they'd waited on cold dark platforms in the middle of nowhere and they'd sat on freezing trains for hours and hours. All night, in fact. With a five month old baby. Picky hadn't slept a wink. She was getting married in just 24 hours.

At this point I need to pause for a second.

I know that you're thinking something along the lines of, 'Yeah, but they made it. So it's all good'.

I know for a fact that you're right on the verge of telling me to 'stop my moaning, suck it up and get that bloody girl to that bloody wedding'. To her wedding.

But you see, the thing is this; I haven't actually started the story yet. The nightmare hasn't actually begun to unfold. Not yet. It does. Very soon.

Right now in fact.

The nightmare starts here ...

When we finally got to the hotel Picky was too exhausted to notice that it looked like a bomb had hit it. She needed to sleep. So did her parents. Pearl didn't. Pearl was wide awake. I popped Picky to bed, let her parents grab some rest, and took Pearl in her pram on a wee walk around London.

Well, not really. By now the snow was 2-feet thick. We walked down to Harrods in Knightsbridge and I pushed her around Al-Fayed's 'corner shop' for a while.

Then I wandered back to The Intercontinental with my daughter. Reception told me that my best mate, Dale, had arrived. Dale had flown all the way from Florida for our wedding. She'd left her fella, Tony, at home with their two kids.

Tony is one of my favourite people in the whole world. We were both gutted that he couldn't make it to our wedding. But someone had to stay home and look after the kids. I couldn't wait to see Dale. We go back ages me and Daley. Plus she was 12-weeks pregnant with their 3rd kid. She hadn't met Pearl yet. We had heaps to talk about.

I knocked on Dale's door. No answer. I knocked again. I could hear something. Something. Something. The door opened. Slowly. Too slowly. Far too slowly. Dale never opened doors THAT slowly. Dale was lying on the floor trying to open the door from the inside. I managed to get into her room. Just.

The first thing I saw was blood. In the bathroom. Lots of blood. I panicked.

Dale looked terrible. She was lying on the floor bent over, curled up. In a ball. In agony. Clutching her stomach. A.G.O.N.Y. There were no words. None. We both knew. We knew. Shit, we knew. The one person who didn't know was Tony. He was in Florida with the kids.

A question. How do you call one of your favorite people in the world and tell him that his wife - your best mate - has miscarried. In a hotel in London. When he's in a house in Florida. On the day before you're due to get married?

I called 999. I screamed for an ambulance. An ambulance was on its way. I helped Dale from the floor to the bed. She was distraught. That made two of us. Two very distraught people were about to become three very distraught people.

& then I left Dale on the bed and walked out into the hotel corridor. I had Dale's phone in my hand. I called Tony in Florida. He answered. He thought it was Dale. It was her phone. Her number came up. He was sooo happy to hear her voice. It was my voice. I told him. That was when I really lost it. It was also when Picky turned up. Reception had called her, woken her and told her she'd better get to Dale's room. Quick.

Picky. My bride-to-be. My exhausted bride-to-be. She walked straight into Emotion Central, it was just up beyond Panic City. I'd just told Tony that his wife was covered in blood and had miscarried after her long flight to England and that an ambulance was on its way. I promised him that I would take care of Dale. Obviously I was going to keep my promise to Tony ... and not my pre-wedding hair appointment.

Picky. She was exhausted. She'd only had two hours sleep. This was supposed to be her time. Her day. She had an appointment to get her fingernails done. And her toes. Both were cancelled. I was supposed to mind Pearl. Now she had to look after Pearl. Pearl was only 5-months old. You can't just leave a 5-month old baby in the hotel lobby and go and get your fingernails done. Or your toes.

I went to Guys & St Thomas' Hospital with Dale.

I can tell you this right now. Never in a million years did I expect to be sitting in the back of an ambulance, with siren blaring and blue-lights on, shooting across London with my best mate lying next to me in agony. Never. And especially not on the day before my wedding day. Call me old-fashioned if you like. I just didn't.

Nor did I expect to be the person who had to call Dale's mum and dad to tell them that their daughter had miscarried on the floor of a hotel room in Central London. But I did. Poor Sylvia and Adrian. They live in Southampton on the south coast of England. As we whizzed through the streets of London in the ambulance they told me that they were on their way to London. Through the driving snow. I booked them a room at The Intercontinental. It had spare rooms. Course it did. No-one else was staying there. The place looked like a bomb had hit it.

At the hospital everyone assumed that I was Dale's husband. It was beautifully ironic. I was no-one's bloody husband. Yet. Give me a chance, please.

Just let me get married!

I did. Eventually. But sitting there in a cubicle in the Maternity Unit at one of London's leading hospital's, whilst my mate was off being scanned and tested, I seriously questioned whether I would. And whether I could. Whether we could. Especially after the day we'd all had. Friday. The worst day in (my) living memory.

Next came Saturday. Saturday was a big day. THE big day. My wedding day. Our wedding day. It couldn't be any worse than Friday could it? It couldn't. Surely not. Could it?

Of course it could.

Hope you're having a great week.

Pip pip x

Part 6a. Our wedding. D-Day. The worst day ever.

It all started to go horribly wrong as soon as I walked into the hotel.

The thing was that I didn't so much 'walk into' the hotel. I walked round it. And then I walked into it. Through a side door. The swanky main entrance was closed. For renovations. No-one had told me about the renovations. Nor had anyone told me that the renovations that no-one had told me about involved industrial jack-hammering to remove the marble. All day. All day. From 8am til 6pm.

And so began the story of our wedding. The worst day ever.

Describing your wedding day as 'the worst day ever' is a big call. You have to be really sure. To avoid hyperbole and accusations of over-dramatising things, you have to flick back through as many bloody awful days as you can remember, and then be able to write in your blog and with your hand placed firmly on your heart, that your wedding day - your wedding day for god's sake! - was the worst day you've ever had.

It was.

Hand on heart. Firmly. It really was. Hands down. No debate.

It was a complete disaster from start to finish. Actually, it was a complete disaster from pre-start to post-finish. It was a comedy of errors. A story of stuff-ups. A diary of disasters. I kid you not. I dare you to read this and conclude otherwise. You won't. You'll agree that my wedding day was the worst day I've ever had. And that's without you knowing any other bad days I might have had.

You'll finish reading this and you'll be mightily relieved that my wedding day wasn't your wedding day. At times you'll think that I'm exaggerating stuff, or making it up. I'm not, I promise.

This is all true. I guarantee it. Or your money back. Pity I couldn't get my money back!

I'll get the preliminaries out of the way very quickly. I'm pretty sure you don't want to hear the preliminaries. You want juice. Gossip. Dirt. Trust me, you'll get it. But I need to set the scene, so please bear with me for the briefest of moments.

The Preliminaries

Me and Picky were living out our lives quite happily in Sydney. Our 'de facto' status was causing us no trouble at all. But when you've met the love of your life - the one person you know you're gonna be with forever - you really may as well get hitched. For no other reason than Picky would get a nice ring and we might get a nice salad bowl or two. So, one winter whilst we were skiing in Queenstown, I popped the question.

& then I did something that I would caution all blokes to take note of - I convinced Picky that a winter wedding in Europe would be romantic.

Note to self (and to all other blokes in the known Universe): Never - and I do mean never - think that you know more about a) weddings, or b) romance, than the woman you love. You don't and you never will. I didn't. But I didn't know it. I was about to find out the hard way. The very hard way.

A winter wedding in Europe. Picky was immediately sceptical. She wanted a hot, sunny, summer wedding. In Sydney. Her home. Our home.

It wasn't to be. The thing is that I can be a real convincing so-and-so when I want to be. It's been said that I can sell ice to the eskimos. I'm not sure about that. But I did somehow manage to 'sell' a winter wedding in Europe to Picky. The ice and those bloody eskimos will crop up again later, I promise you.

A winter wedding in Europe!

It certainly had its upsides, it really did. My family and friends in the UK could come. Picky's family and friends in Germany could come. We'd just had Pearl, so everyone in Europe would get to meet her. We could 'do' Xmas in Germany. Plus I painted a perfect picture of a crisp, cool Winter's day with the sun low in the sky and a light dusting of fluffy snow on the ground. Ice to eskimos, ice to eskimos. Picky agreed.

The nitty gritty of Our Big Day looked like this -

Wedding date

2pm on Saturday 18th December 2010

Our Wedding

Wedding party to stay at The Intercontinental, Park Lane, London

Official Ceremony at Islington Registry Office, Islington High Street

Private champagne ride on The London Eye

Wedding reception a Theo Randall's @ The Intercontinental, Park Lane

Wedding breakfast the next day for all guests in the world-famous Cookbook Cafe @ The Intercontinental, followed by a walking tour of the famous London sights

That was the plan.

And believe me, it was planned. Meticulously. Down to music that we would enter Islington Registry Office to (Florence & the Machine, You've got the Love).

If I was to pop a marketing spin on my own wedding - as I'm prone to do with these things - I would say that we billed it as 'a romantic winter wedding in London surrounded by the European people we love'. 

The Thursday before our wedding. D-day. Disaster Day.  

So, I walked into the hotel via what was effectively a side-door and my first thought was that the place had been bombed. It genuinely looked like a bomb had hit it. Just hit it. The beautiful marble atrium and reception area that we had seen on the internet was a scene of utter devastation and total chaos. It turned out that the beautiful marble atrium and reception area was being converted into a stunning non-marble atrium and reception area. That would be ready in a month. For now there wasn't an atrium. Or a reception area. But there was noise. Real, proper noise. To remove marble you need a jackhammer or two. Or 50. It was basically a building site. It was the venue for our wedding reception.

O yes and the world-famous Cookbook Cafe - the place we had booked (yes, booked) for 20 people on the morning after our wedding - was closed because of the renovations. Or because a bomb had hit the hotel.

Thank heavens that Picky wasn't with me. She would have been devastated if she'd have seen the beautiful hotel that we had booked reduced to this, a deafening building site. Picky's devastation was coming, of course, but for now my wife-to-be was in Germany with her parents.

Picky had gone to Germany with Pearl a week before our wedding day. She wanted to spend some quality time with her folks before she got hitched. I had 'wedding stuff' to do in London. She was due to fly back to London with her folks on the Thursday evening. Two days before our wedding day. I would meet them all off the plane at Stansted Airport.

On Thursday - the Thursday before our wedding on the Saturday - I left 'the building site' and took the train to Stansted Airport.  I'd bought a nice bottle of wine (for the girls, excluding Pearl) and some great English beers for the fellas. We could drink it on the train back from the airport to London.

I walked into Stansted Airport. And into pure unadulterated chaos. Chaos. At that precise moment, on that precise Thursday evening, practically every single airport in Western Europe had closed due to heavy snow. As I walked into the Arrivals Hall to meet my future family - with a huge smile and huge bag of booze - all the flight boards flicked around to display one simple word .... CANCELLED.  The airport was total bedlam. It was the week before Christmas. More importantly it was 36 hours before my wedding.

& then I remembered something really rather important; I didn't have my phone with me. It was back in the hotel. There were 3million devastated people queueing for the four solitary payphones at Stansted Airport.

When I finally reached the front of the queue and called Picky, she was at Paderborn Airport in the middle of Germany. Paderborn Airport had just been closed down. Their flight had been cancelled and they had been told that Paderborn would stay closed for 'at least a week'. The same applied to every single airport in the whole of Germany. Except one. Dusseldorf.

Dusseldorf is 12hours from Paderborn. By train. By two trains. And a bus.

There was one flight to London from Dusseldorf. It was the next morning at 6am. Picky told me she had to go. It was 6pm. She had a twelve-hour train journey to make. With her parents and a 5-month old baby. She doubted they would make it. And in any case there was every chance that Dusseldorf Airport would be declared closed during those 12 hours.

I put the payphone down.

I found a spare piece of floor in the airport. It was packed with people 'bedding down' for the night, using their luggage as makeshift beds. I opened the bottle of wine. I didn't bother with a glass. The bottle would do just fine. The airport was jam-packed. And noisy. Really, really noisy. It was still a good deal more peaceful than the Intercontinental Hotel, mind you.

I sat alone in the airport drinking red wine from a bottle and I contemplated the cancellation of my wedding day.

That was Thursday. D-Day. Disaster day.

Friday came next. It always does.

And Friday - the day before our wedding day - turned out to be even worse than Thursday. Far worse.

Have a great weekend.

Pip pip

Part 5. De facto. The best day I've ever had.

When I was 10 my mum brought home a fundraiser for the local Scouts. It was one of those games where you had to write your name next to one of 40 English football teams. 

There was a gold strip at the top of the game that, once removed, would reveal the name of one of the teams. Whoever had selected the winning team in the game below won the prize. 

It was 50p a go. The prize was 5 quid. It was 1979. 5 quid was worth $8000 in 1979. It's worth about 32c now. That's the Australian mining boom and the GFC for ya.

Anyway, I decided that I simply had to win the 5 quid. I had two choices; I could guess correctly, or I could cheat. I didn't fancy my chances at guessing correctly. Like I say, there were 40 teams to choose from. By the time I'd decided to cheat I'd already spent the 5 quid in my head. On sweets from the local newsagents. And on a new tennis racquet from same newsagents. Tennis racquets were cheaper in 1979. So were sweets.

Whilst my mum was otherwise engaged, (it was a Monday evening, so - obviously - it was Coronation Street), I carefully pulled off the gold strip, saw that the winning team was Blackburn Rovers, wrote my name in the winning box below, dropped my 50p into the little plastic bag and .... froze. The little gold strip wouldn't re-stick. 

My cunning plan quickly unravelled. It didn't just unravel. It spiraled. First downwards. And then completely out of control. I tried licking the back of the gold strip to make it stick better. It shriveled up on my tongue. I pulled at it to stretch it out again. It broke in two. And then one half stuck to my finger, which was wet from trying to stick it back down. It completely disintegrated. And then Coronation Street ended. My mum would be putting the kettle on any minute. The kettle was right there, in the kitchen, next to me, in the middle of the scene of the crime. My crime. I stood there in a state of almost uncontrollable blind panic. Right on cue my mum walked in. She asked me what I was doing. Cheating. That's what I was doing. Cheating. Badly.

(As punishment for cheating I had to buy all 40 guesses in the game. And I had to give the 5 quid 'winnings' to the Scouts. Cheating never pays. It cost me 20 quid).

I had that same feeling of uncontrollable blind panic whilst I was sitting in Immigration with Picky. We weren't even cheating. We were 100% 'clean'. We were 'on the level'. We were 'dead-set straight'. But Immigration's like that. It's one of those places where you feel guilty before you even start. Before you've even opened your gob you feel like you're lying through your teeth. They like it that way I'm sure. Those Immigration Agents. They love watching you stress whilst you're sitting, sweating buckets in the Immigration Holding Room.

Picky had come 'home' to Oz on a tourist visa. She only had three months. We spent those three months 'preparing our case'. For Immigration. And there we were sitting, sweating, waiting for our appointment. The old bloke (me) and the young chick (Picky). In Immigration. I was nervous as a kitten. It looked dodgy. It felt dodgy. I felt dodgy. "So, sir, you met a teenager on a beach in Thailand did you? And you want us to give her Australian Residency, do you? Not bloody likely'. I could see them leading Picky away in handcuffs as they lectured me about 'finding someone my own age at the local bowling club'.

"TIPLER!" (It was pre-name change. You can catch up on the whole name change thang right HERE). Our moment had arrived. This was it.

We were led into an I.I.B. - Immigration Interrogation Booth. I was half-expecting the stern looking Immigration Agent to don her rubber gloves and whip out the cold spoons. Psychologically, I wasn't quite ready to drop my pants and bend over. 

But she didn't. So I didn't. 

She tapped at a computer instead. Her face changed.  She was looking at the I.A.I.R. - the International Airport Immigration Records. Picky had visited Australia more than 10 times in the past 3 years. Her face changed. The Immigration Agent suddenly had that unmistakable 'ah-so-you've-not-just-found-her-on-the-internet-and-shipped-her-over' look on her face.

& then Picky produced The File. It was a huge ring-binder full of 'our stuff'. Emails, photos, letters, boarding passes, tickets, emails to her parents about us, to her friends about us, birthday cards, Xmas cards, Valentine's cards, any-day cards. The File contained 4 years of 'stuff'. Our stuff. It was our entire relationship ... with two small holes punched in the side and filed. The Agent was stunned. I got the feeling that she was more accustomed to the 'it's-clear-you've-just-found-her-on-the-internet-and-shipped-her-over'* type of case. She didn't say much more. The gloves and cold spoons remained unused. I was mildly disappointed.

Case closed. Picky was in. Just like that. The vast vastness that is Australia was hers. Ours.

We left Immigration with a freshly-stamped passport and an O.I.S. - Official Immigration Status. De facto.

We weren't 'lovers' or 'partners', or even just 'a couple'. None of these states mean anything in the ever-suspicious eyes of Immigration. You can only ever be one of two things - married or de facto. 

The day we were officially de facto was officially 'the best day I've ever had'. 

Then again, the day we were officially married was officially 'the worst day I've ever had'. 

But that's another story altogether! 

Pip pip

* I would like to state for the record that there's nowt wrong with meeting people - male or female - on the internet, or indeed with 'shipping them over' anywhere. As long as they fully consent to being 'shipped'.