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I’m writing in the shade of marital discord. Tom and I have been together 22 years. We have 3 children, 2 cats, 1 dog and a house that’s impossible to keep tidy. We work, we work out, we have noisy family meals, we try to stay sane and socialise. 99% of nights, a 6 year old sleeps between us. Intimacy is found in snatches. Still good though, when it’s found.
Yesterday, Tom said – quite wisely – that discord now doesn’t negate the great time we had before. We used to have a real spark, great adventures and inseparable fun. We were together for
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10 years before kids arrived. That’s most of our twenties, child free, as a fearsome twosome.
There’s a lot of stories. Many of them travel related: the time we were going to Copenhagen and we rendezvous’d at Paddington to get the Heathrow Express, except Tom had forgotten the… suitcase. Or when I booked him a trip to Berlin for his birthday, except on check in we discovered I had only booked me a seat on the plane. Or when we were so ‘early’ for a flight from Mexico City to the Yuchatan, that we casually shopped for Tequila, missing our
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plane and having to wait 10 hours in the sparse domestic airport for the next one. Or the six weeks in Ibiza when we lived on very little cash, catching buses to parties in the hills we didn’t know how to get home from. And of course, our Ibizan wedding 2005, where we jumped into the pool, in full wedding regalia.
My sister has said to me many times that my life is like a film. Certainly, how Tom and I met has movie merits. In these swipe-dating times it’s positively charming. It was Autumn 2000, evening time, as I hopped off the tube at Tooting
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Bec and walked up my Victorian terraced street. The street was dark, curtains drawn, except for one house which had a brightly lit lounge.
Each evening as I passed by, my eyes were naturally drawn to the light. Soon enough I noticed this lounge had boys in it. Boys around my age. Handsome boys around my age. I felt like I needed to meet them. One evening I took matters into my own hands and wrote a note:
“Hello Boys, We thought it would be fun to hook up for a drink with you all. Stop watching TV and come and meet us in the Kings Head. Thursday,
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9pm, Be there! From the girls up the road.”
I said girls plural, so I didn’t sound like a stalker. I popped it through the door, and on Thursday, I duly dragged 2 friends to the Kings Head in Tooting, where we drank 2-for-1 cocktails and waited. Soon, 4 boys sat on a nearby table. “It’s them.” I said, and nervously walked the patterned carpet to ask them if they’d received a note.
“No,” One of them said, quickly, cheekily. As I walked away – embarrassed – they laughed. Yes, they’d got the note. The cheeky one was Tom. We all
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spent the night in the pub. Back at their house for a smoke, we saw a can of Mr Sheen on their mantelpiece; as they had tidied up, “just in case.”
Tom was 23, like me. We flirted. A few weeks later we kissed for the first time. Six months later, I moved in with ‘the boys down the road.’ Less than 5 years later we were married. We weren’t the only ones: my school friend Camila married Mike, another member of 12 Stapleton Road.
It was Mike’s mum who was making the curtains, but she hadn’t got round to fitting them yet. If she had,
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we might not all have met. I might have chickened out of putting the note through the door, or they might not have come to the pub that night. It’s like that Pulp song: “Something changed.” From that note, that night, that chain of events, we are here 22 years later, with 3 kids, 2 cats, 1 dog, and a house that’s impossible to keep tidy.
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Molly Gunn, Editor - 10 Aug 23
I’m writing in the shade of marital discord. Tom and I have been together 22 years. We have 3 children, 2 cats, 1 dog and a house that’s impossible to keep tidy. We work, we work out, we have noisy family meals, we try to stay sane and socialise. 99% of nights, a 6 year old sleeps between us. Intimacy is found in snatches. Still good though, when it’s found.
Yesterday, Tom said – quite wisely – that discord now doesn’t negate the great time we had before. We used to have a real spark, great adventures and inseparable fun. We were together for 10 years before kids arrived. That’s most of our twenties, child free, as a fearsome twosome.
There’s a lot of stories. Many of them travel related: the time we were going to Copenhagen and we rendezvous’d at Paddington to get the Heathrow Express, except Tom had forgotten the… suitcase. Or when I booked him a trip to Berlin for his birthday, except on check in we discovered I had only booked me a seat on the plane. Or when we were so ‘early’ for a flight from Mexico City to the Yuchatan, that we casually shopped for Tequila, missing our plane and having to wait 10 hours in the sparse domestic airport for the next one. Or the six weeks in Ibiza when we lived on very little cash, catching buses to parties in the hills we didn’t know how to get home from. And of course, our Ibizan wedding 2005, where we jumped into the pool, in full wedding regalia.
My sister has said to me many times that my life is like a film. Certainly, how Tom and I met has movie merits. In these swipe-dating times it’s positively charming. It was Autumn 2000, evening time, as I hopped off the tube at Tooting Bec and walked up my Victorian terraced street. The street was dark, curtains drawn, except for one house which had a brightly lit lounge.
Each evening as I passed by, my eyes were naturally drawn to the light. Soon enough I noticed this lounge had boys in it. Boys around my age. Handsome boys around my age. I felt like I needed to meet them. One evening I took matters into my own hands and wrote a note:
“Hello Boys, We thought it would be fun to hook up for a drink with you all. Stop watching TV and come and meet us in the Kings Head. Thursday, 9pm, Be there! From the girls up the road.”
I said girls plural, so I didn’t sound like a stalker. I popped it through the door, and on Thursday, I duly dragged 2 friends to the Kings Head in Tooting, where we drank 2-for-1 cocktails and waited. Soon, 4 boys sat on a nearby table. “It’s them.” I said, and nervously walked the patterned carpet to ask them if they’d received a note.
“No,” One of them said, quickly, cheekily. As I walked away – embarrassed – they laughed. Yes, they’d got the note. The cheeky one was Tom. We all spent the night in the pub. Back at their house for a smoke, we saw a can of Mr Sheen on their mantelpiece; as they had tidied up, “just in case.”
Tom was 23, like me. We flirted. A few weeks later we kissed for the first time. Six months later, I moved in with ‘the boys down the road.’ Less than 5 years later we were married. We weren’t the only ones: my school friend Camila married Mike, another member of 12 Stapleton Road.
It was Mike’s mum who was making the curtains, but she hadn’t got round to fitting them yet. If she had, we might not all have met. I might have chickened out of putting the note through the door, or they might not have come to the pub that night. It’s like that Pulp song: “Something changed.” From that note, that night, that chain of events, we are here 22 years later, with 3 kids, 2 cats, 1 dog, and a house that’s impossible to keep tidy.
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Molly Gunn is the founder and editor of Selfish Mother, a site she created for like-minded women in 2013. Molly has been a journalist for over 15 years, starting out working on fashion desks at The Guardian, The Telegraph & ES Magazine before going freelance in 2006 to write for quality publications. She now edits Selfish Mother, sells #GoodTees to raise funds for charity, & writes freelance for Red Magazine and The Sunday Telegraph's Stella. Molly is mother to Rafferty, 6, Fox, 4, and baby Liberty. She is married to Tom aka music producer Tee Mango and founder of Millionhands. They live in Bruton, Somerset.
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