Romantic gestures

I've moaned a lot about Husband recently and his lack of romanticism. He's not one for small romantic gestures but I suppose neither am I. I may buy him a bottle of wine or a book from a charity shop (last of the big spenders, me) if I spot something I think he'll like, but we tend to express our love in more mundane little ways every day. But I don't want you to go thinking that Husband doesn't have a romantic bone in his body. He just prefers to save up the small spontaneous gestures and blow it all on the big ones.

As I said, we've been married thirty years. In that time there've been three BIG romantic gestures from Husband, roughly spaced at ten year intervals (he has to build himself up to it slowly ...)

Number one occurred one Christmas when the children were small. I opened a parcel and found a box of Maltesers. Yummy, my favourites. But when I opened the box there was a diamond ring inside. Pretty cool, eh?

The third - I'll come back to the second - took place a few Christmases ago when somehow Husband managed to get Betty Beetle onto the drive for Christmas morning for me without me suspecting a thing!

The second chronologically-speaking was absolutely the best and, I think, unsurpassable.

One Sunday afternoon, he returned home and walked into the kitchen holding in his arms the bundle of fluff that was to be known as Harvey.

The dog we'd had before had been rather snappy and couldn't be trusted with the children's friends, so we found her a new home on a smallholding. When she went, I was so upset Husband said we were never going to have another dog. I had no idea he was investigating possibilities until he walked in through the door, and brought Harvey into our lives, where he was to remain for the next fourteen and a bit years. And in our hearts forever.

I love my husband.