Our Story – How We Met

Today, Stuart and I have been married for 6 years. Not a special anniversary though every anniversary, of course, is special for us as it is a celebration of our relationship.

I just wanted to reflect back on the day we tied the not but also over the past 6 years and firstly a how we got together. So this is Part 1 of our story, how we met.

I met Stuart through a mutual friend, Sparky, back in (as Stuart calls it) the Summer of Love in 2003. It was a gorgeous summer – the sun shone for much of it throughout June and July and we were both social little bunnies sampling the delights that London had to offer. Stuart lived in Wood Green  with a couple of friends, James & Phil, and I lived in Balham with my friend Drew, and then Claire and Jan.

The first time we met was when he was with his then girlfriend and we went to a club. To be honest, we didn’t spend much time together and because he had a girlfriend I didn’t give him much thought. We spent the night dancing in separate rooms of the club…me with my broken arm in a pink cast following a football incident (back then I played five a side football and had the position of goalie for my fearless throwing myself after the ball and menacing tiger like growl!!! he he).

We met a couple of other times after that when out and I became aware that him and his girlfriend had ‘separated’ – she had gone back home to Switzerland so they could have some space – so I may have flirted a bit! He was oblivious to my ‘charms’ so I flirted a bit more. Nope, nothing! So I gave up!

I then had work drinks and Sparky had been invited along (it was a relaxed affair and many of my work colleagues were my outside of work friends too) and Sparky invited Stuart. We bonded a bit more as he smoked the same cigarettes I used to smoke (menthol Marlborough lights) and started smoking again that night! He had a rotten cold so I told him there were 3 things that cured a cold! I’d like to point out that at this point I wasn’t flirting, I had given up on that and was just chatting to him as I would any friend. I told him the 3 cures…one I will not say, the other two were alcohol and sex! Apparently, he told me later, he thought I was then flirting! Typical me…try and you get no where, don’t try and…it all happens! We all got drunk! Very drunk! I invited Sparky and Stuart back to mine. After a bit more drinking…and smoking…Sparky retired to bed and that left Stuart and I…we did more than just drinking and smoking!!!!

I woke the next morning on my bedroom floor wearing different clothes to what I’d started in the night before!!!!

I’d said goodbye to Stuart and Sparky and, to be honest, didn’t think much of it. Thought it was just a drunken one night stand.

I was actually off work at the time because of my broken arm so used to go to an internet cafe to check emails. Stuart and I exchanged a few regarding that night, me joking that I couldn’t remember it and him saying was it that bad etc! Then it became apparent that he was interested in more than just a one night stand. I was off to a dance festival with Sparky and some other friends that weekend in Derbyshire but Stuart hadn’t got tickets.

Once we were there, we heard that Stuart and James had got tickets and were on their way! Stuart and I ‘secretly’ wondered off together to talk about stuff. I wasn’t sure on the state of his relationship with his girlfriend. She was in Switzerland and they were ‘on a break’ but was that in a ‘we intend to get back together’ break or ‘we are just stretching out the painful process of finally splitting up’. They had been on-off for a while so I wanted to be sure & didn’t want to be the cause of the break up…though suppose I should’ve thought of that a bit earlier than now! He assured me that it was definitely over this time and he had no intention of getting back together. So we snogged, went on a ride (of the theme park variety – there was no funny business at the festival!! what kind of girl do you  think I am…oh yeah, one that gets drunk and sleeps with boys in one night stands!!!). We then rejoined the group. We both remember a funny moment in the night when a random girl came over and stroked Stuart’s (then) very fit chest! Ha ha!

A couple of days later we went on our first date, on 28 July! We went to Fuel at Covent Garden. I’d been out during the day at Tate Modern with a friend and had turned up considerably late! Oops! But he had waited and we had a lovely time. I laid my cards on the table. I knew he had just come out of a long relationship so may not be up for anything serious. I, on the other hand, had had enough of seeing people for a month or two and the relationship never really going anywhere so was ready for something more serious. So I said to him, if he wanted to go and have a bit of fun first, we could perhaps pick up again in a few months if we were both still single, then that was ok with me but I wasn’t getting into another relationship unless I expected it to go somewhere. He reassured me that he wasn’t interested in doing that and he was ready for a serious relationship with me! I then wondered why I hadn’t tried that approach with the other guys I had dated…it would have solved a lot of bother and silly games!

So that was the beginning of us. Other than a week shortly after when he went to Ibiza with friends we saw each other every day. Stuart started declaring his love for me after just a month or two (which damn near sent me running) and then he moved in with myself, Claire and Jan after 2 months. By Christmas, people were running bets on us as to when Stuart would propose. We moved into our own rented house after about 6 months and then, on our year anniversary, Stuart proposed. No one won the bet!

Part 2, our wedding, coming soon!

Spiritual Pamper Fayre

I went along to a psychic fayre today. The Reiki Master that will be teaching me Reiki, Lorraine, was the organiser and told me about it.

The event involved a number of stalls selling jewellery, spiritual books, aloe vera products, scrummy looking cakes as well as, as you’d imagine, spiritual ‘practitioners’ offering Reiki treatments, aura photography, past life readings, Tarot readings, Ascended Master readings, mediumship, psychic art plus much  more. There were also a number of free workshops running throughout the day with an hour of mediumship as well.

It was nice to see it had attracted a lot of interest as the one I attended in Surrey was a bit of a let down – there were hardly any stalls and it was empty of visitors.

As I say, this was quite the opposite. That said, there wasn’t much on the stalls selling stuff that took my interest – except the scrummy looking cakes but I really wasn’t hungry. I would have liked to see more crystals on sale – in fact, I didn’t see any (think I was after them when I went to one in Surrey but they didn’t have any either). However, there was such a wide range of readings available which, for me, was my main interest in going anyway.

I would have loved to have gone to the past life reading but it was one of the more expensive sessions and was unsurprisingly very popular with lots of times booked up so I decided to go for an Ascended Masters reading. This isn’t something I had heard of before so was intrigued to see how it varied to Angel Readings and Tarot (Angel readings are what I do and I have had a Tarot reading numerous times in the past and have also read my own Tarot card in a workshop once). Afterwards, I felt it was not too dissimilar to a Tarot reading though perhaps with a slightly different focus, I can’t really explain. The practitioner,Pauline, did say that because she reads Tarot as well, this may have an influence over how she reads the Ascended Masters cards.

Anyway, on with the reading. I pulled out 8 cards one at a time which Pauline placed on the table in a sequence. She then turned them over in turn. The first one up – Angel Healing and she said “I get from this that you are a healer yourself or you should be”- well, if that wasn’t a sure sign that I am starting on the right path with my Reiki, I don’t know what is! The reading also said the path I was embarking on was the right one – there was a very positive and definitive ‘Yes’ card!

Another thing that came out from the reading was that I have an artistic talent and that I need to do more of whatever it was. She felt this was music but this is not something I’ve actively pursued. I really enjoy music but I think I’m a bit late to be becoming talented in anything to do with it. I have, however, been trying to do more drawing recently and wonder if this is it. I’m no expert, I’m not the next Van Gogh or Monet, I wouldn’t even call myself an artist, it is just something I enjoy doing and the end result mildly resembles what I intend it to look like (she also said I should speak of my strengths not play them down or highlight may faults…yeah, this is me trying to do that…one step at a time). As an example, here is my latest offering. Its the tree that lives on the green in front of our house – it looks lovely with the autumn sun shining on its yellow leaves – it inspired me to draw it!

The reading was so clear and the majority of it made immediate sense to me.The reading was meant to be half an hour but the cards were so clear that we were finished in 10 minutes so she asked me if I had a specific question and to choose 6 more cards.

With my thoughts being very much around work at the moment and whether I should be pushing myself harder to find a job and what that job should be, my next question was “should I get a job?”.

The cards were showing that, for now, I shouldn’t be looking for a job as I needed the time to really figure out what I wanted to do and to ‘find myself’. OK, she didn’t use such a cliché but that’s pretty much how I interpreted it. I needed to work on a few things with myself and to not stress about a job. When the time was right, I’d meet someone who would help me get the right job. She also said that, once I had made up my mind what I wanted to do and when the time was right for me to get a job, I should make sure I get a good work/life balance and that I shouldn’t fully adopt just one area of my life and let the others go by the wayside.

This was reassuring. I may have said before that when the time is right for me to do a particular ‘thing’ it kind of just falls in my lap. I’m very lucky that I don’t have to fight hard for it. Yes, I usually (not always) have to go through the hard task of an interview or interviews like everyone else, and they are often far from easy, but it will happen that the job almost seeks me out rather than me seek it out. I have also fought hard for things that weren’t right for me or didn’t come about. So, perhaps I haven’t been searching for a job as hard as I could have and I couldn’t help but wonder if I was being lazy by putting all my faith in fate. I am very lucky that I have this privilege and I appreciate that if circumstances were different I’d be taking whatever job I could get but I was reassured to hear this is the right approach for me. She said if I stress about it then it wont happen but if I relax and take my time it will all fall into place. This is so much like my life. Something I should remind myself of often.

She then did a third general reading of a further 6 cards which did more to enforce what had already been said with more of the ‘Yes’ card!

I did go to the hour’s mediumship too. There were 3 mediums that did a 20 minute session each. The second one came to me with a young boy who was in spirit world that went to my school and that I was close to who passed away young (when I questioned her on this she said between the age of 6 and 17) from a childhood illness. The only person I could relate this to was one of my best friend’s brother who died of Leukaemia when my friend and I were in the final year of Junior school (her brother was in senior school). I remember it well and it was terribly sad at the time but I can’t think of why he would be coming to me. Although I was close to my friend, I wasn’t close to her brother and I was at the age where I didn’t fully appreciate death and illness in the same way as we might do adults, unless you lose someone close to you.

Other than losing enthusiasm for my studies and that whatever I am doing this boy thinks it is the perfect thing for me I didn’t really get anything else from it. She finished with a name, Christopher or Chris, but didn’t say whether he was living or in spirit and didn’t give any further information about this.

The other thing that came to me was psychic smells. The third Medium was asking someone else if it meant anything to her. She asked her if she had started to notice unusual smells (which she calls psychic smells) like flowers and orange scent. This struck a chord with me because when I was running at the beginning of the week all of a sudden I’d smell a really strong smell which was completely strange for where I was – one of these occurrences was the strong smell of orange. It wasn’t quite the fruit but more like an orange scent or another flower with an orangey smell. There was no obvious source for this smell (I think I was running past a hotel carpark at the time) and it stayed with me for quite a while like it was following me. This isn’t the first time this has happened to me and I often smell scents which don’t make sense (pardon the pun) for what is happening around me – often they’ll be in my own home and will remain unexplained and will disappear as quickly as they arrived. When the lady she was talking to couldn’t understand it she asked the room so I raised my hand. She said when you start to open yourself spiritually your vibration becomes lighter enabling the spirits to try to ‘show off’ to you and this is one of the ways in which they do it. There have been a few strange things happening recently – more than normal – so this would make sense.

After the hour of mediumship I left the fayre to go and meet Stuart and Callum, who I had left exploring Moors Valley Country Park.

The event certainly left me with lots to ponder on.