SO eager were my fiancé and I to become man and wife that we picked the earliest date we could to plight our troth after our engagement.
You could say we didn’t really think it through.
That was unusual for me as someone who has typically worked out how I’m going to cope with several possible scenarios before even embarking on an endeavour. Exhausting? Yes. Boring? Possibly. Do I regret deviating from that practice? Definitely.
Plumping for the end of March probably seemed like a fairly sensible idea at the time. I have a vague memory of being delighted that the waxing and waning of the moon that year meant we could have an Easter egg theme.
Also it was a fairly congested 12 months for nuptials - all of which had been planned far in advance of ours - so picking a date too close to those of other family and friends would have seemed rude.
It didn’t dawn on us until we came to try and book a honeymoon that there was a reason March/April had been left wide open by the other brides and grooms.
Most of our 'dream’ destinations would have been too chilly for the relaxing post wedding idyll we had imagined.
While we managed to hit upon the `perfect’ solution (of which more later), we failed to take into account that this would still hold true for future anniversary trips.
Thus we found ourselves wandering around a desolate Connemara town where the only shop open was a SuperValu, going for necessarily brisk walks along the chilly Amsterdam canals and an abortive trip to the Marble Arch Caves during a Co Fermanagh break where we discovered that apparently, like some sort of damp and boggy Narnia, winter never ends.
This was all in the future. Little did we realise, that very first trip - the honeymoon itself – had been the biggest gamble of all.
When we booked our Caribbean cruise I thought I had thought of everything. Hurricane season runs from June 1 to November 30 – big tick. Rainfall was fairly low – hurrah. Temperature wouldn’t dip below 20C or climb above 30C – result.
We had a lovely time, thanks for asking. Made friends for life (By which I mean we exchanged Christmas cards for a few years and now can’t remember the names of people in our album). Dined like kings (Who knew royalty have dessert at breakfast?). Made amazing discoveries (I have a LOT of doppelgangers in Puerto Rico. Also they don’t let you off the ship in combats in Barbados, much to the annoyance of Republican-voting travellers from the US).
I may have (definitely did) come back with lactose intolerance after overdoing it with the free froyo, but I didn’t realise it could have been a lot worse.
According to analysis conducted by The Independent from data recorded by the US Centers of Disease Control (CDC) travellers who board cruise ships in the winter months run a far higher risk of contracting a serious virus than summer passengers.
And as we now know from Connemara and Fermanagh, March/April definitely count as winter months. The statistics back our rural Irish cousins, placing “March and April also well above average”.
The reporting came as the Diamond Princess remained quarantined in Japan because of the deadly coronavirus. Apparently until now norovirus has been the main culprit.
I must admit to feeling more than a pang of fellow feeling listening to a married couple calling into a news programme to reveal how it feels to be quarantined for 14 days in your room with basic food.
“We’re not so bad,” the husband said. “We’ve got a balcony. It’s the people in the inside cabins with no windows that I feel sorry for.”
Gulp.
One dog and two children later, it’s probably just as well that our marriage wasn’t tested by a respiratory or vomiting virus so early on.
