Having picked up the engagement rings, it now rested on me to successfully get one on Radio’s finger without losing it in the intervening couple of days.

My plan was to drive to Radio’s, head to our favourite restaurant, then visit Stratford, where I remembered seeing ducks on the river.

Everything went exactly as planned. We arrived at The Dog accompanied with a bin bag full of presents. Because it was Valentine’s Day, we actually had to wait for space to become available in the restaurant part.

What would normally be an inconvenience turned out to be a very welcome eventuality, since it meant that we could sit at a big table in the comparatively barren pub, and unwrap the various presents.

I’ve been holding out for Radio to photograph them so that I could show what I’d bought her rather than resort to describing it but, alas, she appears not to have developed the knack of using the camera that I bought her, so I’m afraid that you’ll have to put up with loquaciousness from me.

If I remember correctly, the first parcel that I pushed over to her contained a copy of John Steinbeck’s East Of Eden. It was at the point that Radio opened it that I thought to myself “Man, for the sake of a couple of quid more, I could’ve bought a brand-new copy.” Yes, I am tight enough to buy second-hand copies of books.

There was a method to my double madness, however. When Radio opened her second present it should have all become clear. Unfortunately, this is Radio, so she instead pulled her customary confused face

“It’s a Czech book.”

“”

“By John Steinbeck.”

“”

“Jesus! It’s a Czech copy of East Of Eden. I bought you the English version so that you now have your own parallel text.”

Admittedly, it’s far too early in the day for Radio to think about reading novels in Czech, so I thought I’d better reassure her that I wasn’t expecting her to plough through the entire tome and that I figured managing a chapter would be fine. If nothing else, it’s a nice novelty present and will look brilliant on our already loaded future bookshelf.

Next came a small package containing a bright-yellow, rounded duck, made out of glass. She was accompanied by two little ducklings. I thought that they were very cute and, happily, Radio seems to have too.

Around this point we were escorted to our table in the restaurant part.
Fortunately we had a spare seat at the table, because Radio soon found out that we had a couple of extra guests, in the form of Orville and Cyril, the first a cuddly duck, the second a beautiful plushy swan. The two of them were placed on the seat facing Radio, whilst we ordered our customary meals.

In the meantime, I had opened my presents from Radio. She’d been smart enough to use my Amazon wishlist, thus guaranteeing that I received something that I actually wanted.

The first might seem a little bit strange for an adult who’s not a nerdy toy-collector. The thing is that I wasn’t a particularly spoilt child, so never got to own the several hundred various Transformers toys, so when I realised that you can buy books which show photos of (just about) every single toy that was released, I decided that I wanted it. Admittedly, this serves no purpose whatsoever, but I think that it’s no more worthless than those silly novelty “humour” books that I always seem to receive in droves every Christmas.

Radio was kind enough to buy her boyfriend this geek chic nonsense, which was finished off by the end of the weekend.

The second gift that she offered me was only finished a couple of nights back.

I’m something of a language buff and history fan, and these two interests combine to form an individual who enjoys thinking and learning about how the languages that we know now came into being, and what bits and pieces changed over time to take it from A to B.

I have several books on the English language, a subject that has seen some exciting writing, force of repetition and familiarity meaning that later writers can’t rest on their laurels. Bill Bryson and Melvyn Bragg in particular have succeeded in writing some highly readable offerings.

The same hasn’t been true of my books on other languages. I’m thinking of French and Spanish, which have been very dry, academic-style products. Since I wasn’t happy with my history of French written in English, I thought I’d try seeing whether a recent offering written in the language itself would reflect its English equivalents. With this in mind, I added Histoire De La Langue Française by Michelle Huchon to my wishlist, and Radio presented it to me at the table, which made me grin from ear to ear.

Having read it now, I don’t feel any better off than I was before. It was an incredibly dry book, suffering particularly because the author wrote in huge blocks of text that all merged into one boring whole, but the anticipation at the time of the meal was excellent.

This left only one present, Radio’s main present. I bought her a laptop for Christmas, and she’s said to me that she struggles with getting used to using the keypad. Well she got the shock of her life to see a mouse that had white and blue liquid in it and two ducks bobbing about in it

Because there’s a self-service salad bar in the restaurant, I took the opportunity to liberate a few bread rolls, since I had decided that the most appropriate place to propose would be when Radio was feeding ducks, which is something that defines her, one of the few times when you see her totally at peace in public surroundings.

Nature intervened, since the ducks had ceded the way to a bunch of geese, horrible creatures which Radio despises. Seeing nothing else on the horizon and conscious that I didn’t feel that I wanted to propose with an audience around, I decided to proceed with feeding the geese whilst we were alone.

It didn’t take too long for a couple of them to exit the water and come after Radio. This was turning out to be a disaster. The perfect proposal was becoming quite the unpleasant ordeal for Radio.

The day was saved by the arrival of some latecomers, some brave little ducks which dared enter the flock of jabroni geese. I was particularly pleased to see that the cohort featured male mallards, which are my favourite ducks.

Whilst Radio was finishing off, I took out her ring and placed it on my little finger, it being the only one where it could pass the nail. My plan almost came unstuck when Radio made a grab for my hand and would have felt the ring.  I fidgeted, but she went for it again.

Not wishing to upset her (she would’ve thought me in a mood with her) I decided that the time was nigh to pop the question.

“Actually, there’s one more present that I forgot to give you.”

“Oh, that’s OK, Babel.  I’ve had more than enough.”

“Well, I actually have it with me, so I can give it to you now.”

“Oh no, that’s OK.  You’ve given me enough already.  Save it for another day.”

It looked as though Radio was going to save me from the predicament of proposing, which was kind of her, but I decided to go ahead with it anyway, telling her to close her eyes.  She duly complied, though not without informing me that she was nervous.

It was at this point that I twigged why other people don’t propose when feeding the ducks; the ground is a soggy mire, totally inappropriate for placing a knee.  I had to resort to hovering in a crouched position.

I told her to open my eyes and, no word of a lie, she glanced left and right before spotting me kneeling.

“What are you doing down there?! ”

“There’s a ring here!  What do you think I’m doing?”

Hardly the most romantic speech in the world, but I didn’t really get the chance to say much more anyway, since she pulled me to my feet and leapt into my arms.  (Work with me: Radio’s feet never leave the ground, but this was as near to doing so as she’ll ever get.)

It would appear that she was pleased

Anyway, off we went holding hands and about fifteen minutes later she said “I can’t believe that we’re engaged.”

“I don’t think we are.  You never said yes.”

“Didn’t I?  Well you knew I was going to say yes anyway, so that doesn’t count!”

Tags: Getting Married

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