Anniversary Week

This last week has marked a few anniversaries of sorts. This started last Monday when I was attending a blood donation session. One of the nurses noted that I had “obviously done this a few times before”. In fact that occasion was my 50th donation for the Scottish Blood Transfusion service. In total I have probably donated quite a bit more as that wouldn’t cover the times I had donated whilst living in Cardiff or Newcastle.

The second notable anniversary was the 20th anniversary of the UK national lottery. This in itself is not particularly notable but I always remember the date it was held as it was actually the date of my wedding. Obviously my 20th wedding anniversary was of more relevance to me and I took the day off work so we could go out to a restaurant together without worrying about child minders and the like. Someone did buy us a lottery ticket for the day. It didn’t win. Karma doesn’t work like that.

I had mentioned my anniversary in the office and one of my colleagues was quite interested about what we did for the wedding as she is organising her own at the moment. Of particular interest was what wedding car we used. Asking around the office, quite a few people hadn’t bothered with one at all and a couple of others had gone for a large Jaguar (which I quite like the idea of) or a Mercedes (which I think is a bit dull – probably associating them with German taxi ranks). A few had gone for the standard luxury cars – usually an old Rolls Royce although I have seen the new models used as wedding cars which is dreadful as they are hideous. A couple of the more esoteric choices included a 1950s Cadillac and a 1930s Bentley (which was James Bonds original car in the novels).

Princess IV - similar to my wedding car.

The car I chose for my wedding was probably quite an esoteric choice as well. We went to see a wedding car hire firm and they had a reasonable array of lovingly restored old cars including a Rolls-Royce Silver Shadow that the firm's owner had rescued and restored from an old barn. However, the car I chose was an Austin Princess – not the dreadful wedgy rep-mobile from the 1970s but a rare 1959 Princess IV which has originally been used as the official transport of the Mayor of Sunderland. This really appealed to me as it was an unusual and particularly beautiful piece of craftsmanship and it had some sort of backstory as well. Unfortunately the current trend seems to be for stretch Hummers. I suppose some people have no taste.