Dear LPG,

It is of little consequence to anyone else but today is my 44^th  wedding anniversary.  I have no doubt that many other senior Lewisham couples are celebrating too, so can I start by saying Happy Anniversary.

For many of us older couples a wedding anniversary will be a celebration that we have enjoyed so many times that there seems little point in doing it again, and we all know how the male of the human species is likely to forget, so the older man can be guaranteed to let it go by.  I am sorry, that is a very general statement but I see so many of my friends, who are still fortunate not to be single, but could appear to take their partners just a little too much for granted.

I think that I have identified one of those problems when buying presents for my coupled friends.  For my inspiration I nearly always refer to that traditional compilation which lists the anniversary gifts and the materials they should be made of to commemorate each year.  But have you noticed that by the 31^st year, even that list is running out of ideas.  After year number 3o it jumps up to year 35 without taking into account that there are four years in between.

It can be hard enough to work out what to buy for your own other half after all the past anniversaries, but so many of us depend on that list when it comes to buying something for a friend and their other half.   I have to ask if this is a comment on the fact that after the 30^th year the in-between years don’t matter so much anymore.  (I mean the ones that end with 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and 9).

I know from my own experience that we have no more room in our house for receiving pictures and ornaments; we are bursting at the seams.  There is also the consideration that, when I get a present for one of my friends, I want to show them that I remember but don’t have lots of money to spend on something really big.  I have found a few solutions on the Internet, which I hope that LPG will be able to point you towards.

I know that when my friends and I gossip our spouses, past and present, are often a topic of conversation because of something funny or annoying that they did or used to do, and when I think of my own other half it occurs to me that I do exactly the same.  It is not because I don’t love him, even though I have to admit that he gets under my feet more and more since he retired, but even though I appear to take him for granted sometimes, and at others he is particularly annoying, I think, as with my chatty friends, it comes through that we all love our partners very much.

Statistics show that more and more older single people are getting together for another shot at getting spliced these days.  Perhaps this is a good thing because at least they will be at the relatively strait forward end of the anniversary list again.

And I have to admit that I have an ulterior motive for writing this post.  Putting the fact on the Internet is part of his present this year. 

AB, Lewisham

LPG offers a little information with varied copies of the list and some suggested presents…

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Please remember that much of the real information is to be found at the bottom of the selected webpages and will require the use of the slider bar help when finding it.