Keeping the main thing the main thing

Today is my wedding anniversary. Mr Namasi and I have ben married for 26 years - that's more than half my life. And I'm struck by how much there is in common between our marriage and our worklives - it's mainly about priorities and choices.

We chose to view our wedding as the first day of our marriage. The marriage was - and remains - the main thing. And has been a work in progress since its 'launch' 26 years ago today.

On our respective Facebook pages, we are receiving the usual barrage of congratulatory messages, some of which imply that the success of our marriage is due to the 'fact' that we never argue.

Ha!

We argue a lot. I mean can you really believe that someone who writes this opinionated blog is going to have an argument-free marriage? My husband is a strong-willed man. But, as Kate Reynolds (Téa Leoni) says in The Family Man, "I choose us."

So let's just unpick this for a moment:

• We got married on a shoe string budget. Neither of our parents had any money, so we paid for it ourselves.
• The ceremony was brief and to the point. It took minutes.
• It was held in my mother-in-law's granny flat above to my brother- and sister-in-law's house.
• I made the lunch (coq au vin) that followed, which was held downstairs.
• I made my own outfit out of fabric I bought from the designer I worked for (at staff discount) and it was something I could use again afterwards.
• My MIL made the cake.
• My SIL made the dessert (kiwi fruit pavlova) and took the photos. 
• Bride and groom walked into the 'venue' together. We had no retinue (no bridesmaids or best men). 
• We had no alcohol, due to the presence of one alcoholic and one recovering alcoholic. 
• Just family and very close friends were in attendance - fewer than 30 people in all. 
• To be honest, there are things I would do differently if I were to do it over again - it was one of the most stressful days of my life, because I took too much on myself.

BUT

By the end of the ceremony we were just as married as anyone who has spent £15000 (because that's apparently the current UK average according to figures cited on Radio 4 the other day) on the ceremony. Our 4-day honeymoon in a small-town hotel a couple of hours' drive from the city was lovely, too, in spite of the fact that we both got food poisoning on our last day!

Many of our friends and family have had magnificent productions on their wedding day. And I confess to occasional twinges of envy. But we started our married life without the massive debts that can result from the lavish event. We were stone broke, but we were stone broke together and everything we have today, we have acquired together.

Something else that I've noticed is that planning the wedding can become so much the focus of the relationship that, once the wedding is over, some couples can feel quite bereft. Everything happened so much faster for us, that we didn't have time to develop that level of attachment to the occasion. We had been planning to get married in December 1988. But we realised at one point in April that we had no reason to wait - there wasn't going to be additional budget or resource freed up during that time. So we gave ourselves six weeks to bring the whole thing together and got on with it.

So, much like a lot of projects, we had very little time. We had next to no money. We weren't in a position to produce anything shiny. We didn't have a big team of professionals, or an outsourced vendor. We faced a lot of opposition and naysayers who told us that it couldn't and/or shouldn't be done. We were a pair of amateurs who had never done this before, and were too naïve to realise how utterly ill-suited we were to the task at hand (or each other, come to that). We had a few (unpaid) helpers, some willing, some decidedly not so.

We have had better, worse, richer, poorer, sickness and health. We have had disasters, catastrophes, we have had slow-burning, insidious challenges. But we stubbornly resolve every time to release a patch, an update.

The project had a rather inauspicious start by average standards. But it is enduring, because the team is committed. :)

On learning to dismount the high horse

As you (probably) know, I am a South African expat, living in the UK. If you're an expat, too, you will know that a conversation about your accent is something that takes place pretty much on a daily basis. Shopkeepers, people with whom you strike up conversations on the train, people on the other end of the phone, fellow attendees at business meetings... everywhere and anywhere seems to be the right place and any time seems to be the right time for "Where are you from?"

Some people like to guess. South Africans ('saffas'), New Zealanders (kiwis) and Australians (ozzies) often get mistaken for each other. At one stage, I worked with an Australian. We had a lot in common and we got on really well. His family and mine spent social time together on the weekends. This clearly showed in the way we interacted with each other at work, and many people assumed we were a couple, because we got on so well together and 'had the same accent.'

These are three very competitive sporting nations and in general, it doesn't go down too well with a national from one to be mistaken for another. I was no exception. I bristled when I was asked if (and sometimes told that) I was an ozzie or a kiwi. A facetious "g'day mate" brought out the worst in me.

But then I realised something. I can't tell accents apart, either. Yes, I can tell my ozzies from my kiwis (it's in the As and the Is), but I can't tell a Pole from a Latvian - and we have many of both in our town. I can't tell a Pakistani from an Indian, and there are many of both of those all over the UK. I have no idea how offended a Polish person is when asked if they're Latvian, or vice versa. I have no idea whether a cricket fan from Pakistan bristles at being asked if s/he is enjoying an England/India game being televised at the time.

So I decided to get down off that high horse before I got a nosebleed. It really isn't a big deal. And at least the person is showing some interest and making conversation about something other than the weather.

But I'm still ridiculously pleased when someone gets it right. Just this morning, I popped into a little shop on the Charing Cross station and the man behind the counter identified me as a South African. I asked how he could tell, and he said (a) that he was a fan of cricket in general and Kepler Wessels in particular and (b) that with the South African embassy being just across the road, hordes of saffas visited his shop on a daily basis. The man himself was from India...or Pakistan...or Bangladesh...or maybe even Sri Lanka. I couldn't tell. Something I am readier to admit from ground level than I ever was from my perch on that horse I mentioned.

Now if I can just learn to stop bristling when people try to 'do the accent' which I have never heard anyone do successfully...