To cut to the chase, Radio and I got engaged this past Valentine’s Day

I decided that I was going to propose in early January. Radio has not been shy of the subject recently, hanging from my neck in a swimming pool in Szombathely and saying “See, they got married Babel, so why can’t we?” and writing that her ideal station in life now would be to be married.

I drove up to her parents’ house one January morning and decided that I would propose that we find out each other’s ring sizes “just in case I ever do decide to propose to you one day.”

Armed with that information, I decided to start the hunt for rings, so that I could pop the question on Valentine’s Day, at that point about four weeks away.

Normally a last-minute person, this one-off change to organising myself turned out to be a wise decision. Like me, Radio is not a jewellery person, so the traditional gold and stone was out.

I had mined her for information in reverse, by telling her the sort of rings that I would wear and ranting about the sort that I loathe. Sure enough, she volunteered that she also would prefer silver or white gold (although I said pewter), and that she would want something discreet without any protruding jewel. This was a chat about general jewellery, but I’d acquired the information that I wanted

I got in touch with a couple of married friends to find out whether men also wore engagement rings. As it happened, this isn’t traditional, but both of them wore them before getting married. This being the case, I decided that I would get myself a ring in order to show commitment to Radio, and that I would find some way of having it match whatever I got her.

And so the journey began. Passing High Street jewellers yielded nothing of interest. Checks on the internet were also singularly unfruitful.

Eventually I found one that I liked and ordered it, along with a similar one for me. This one was thin, white gold, with three jewels almost embedded within the ring, rather than jutting out.

Radio's on the left, mine on the right

There was a complication. Radio has a thin finger, needing size K. I was told that this would have to be specially made, which would mean a delivery date after Valentine’s Day. Alternatively I could try size L, the next one up. They actually didn’t have this one in stock either, but could get me one within two weeks. I placed the order, and they gave me the same ring in size P in the meantime. (There was a temporary discount on the particular ring that I had chosen, so they were nice enough to sell me a bigger one to exchange later, in case the price reverted whilst waiting for the correct one to arrive.) As luck would have it, the ring I wanted for myself was in stock at the correct size, so I paid for that there and then.

Having set things in motion, my next mission was to throw Radio off the scent. On a whim I went to eBay and looked for a Transformers ring. Unbelievably, such a thing did exist, and in one size only — mine! I blogged about it here in a smokescreening attempt, writing about marriage as some sort of future thing that I might end up doing, but not anytime soon. Radio was swerved. Mission accomplished

Three days prior to Valentine’s Day I received a call to say that my order had arrived. I explained that I was in the office, but would be able to collect it the next day. Come the following afternoon I found myself stuck at a counter for something around half an hour whilst a team of workers that srarted at one and became three were running around the stock room looking for my order.

I was asked a couple of times whether I was sure that I had received a call by an exasperated assistant forlornly hoping that repeating the same question would cause me to change my answer.

Eventually a manager informed me that I had got the message wrong. It turns out that I merely thought that my order was in, but I was actually phoned to inform me that it had been cancelled.

“If I were told that and misunderstood, why didn’t your assistant correct me when I said that I couldn’t be in that afternoon, but would instead come to collect it the following day?”

Their cover blown, they stood by helplessly, except for this manager who at least had the nous to consult their computer to check stock levels at other stores. She announced that one of their stores out of the city had one, and enquired whether I could get there. “I’ll leave right now”, I replied, and the girl helpfully place a hold order on it.

About 40 minutes later I’m in this other store. There is a nice chap helping, but he’s searching without success. I point out to him that it might not have actually been put to one side, since the order was placed within the hour. Sure enough, he looks over the computer notes and finds the recently placed order.

“Size P, yeah?”

“NO! P’s the one I’ve got now! It’s supposed to be a fucking L!”

“L? Are you sure?”

“Of course I am! I’ve been from pillar to post about this, and I can tell you that it’s an L. Well, unless you’ve got a K there, which would be preferable.”

“This ring doesn’t come in K.”

“I know! That’s why I’m having to make do with an L!”

He was a surprisingly nice chap though, found a ring in the correct size, and made the exchange with me.

It was a last-minute deal in the end, in spite of my one-time-only attempt to do things in good time, but I was armed with the rings two days before V-Day

Tags: Getting Married

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 24th, 2009 at 7:00 pm and is filed under Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.