I really enjoy my job – the people are fun, the work’s varied and the grub in the Green Room is good enough to ensure that I will never be asked to join the Birmingham Royal Ballet.
But this week I had an especially entertaining task. To celebrate the arrival of Tell Me on a Sunday we ran a competition inviting subscribers to write in and tell us of the most romantic thing they had done for their partner – or vice versa. The winner would be awarded dinner in our restaurant the mezz plus tickets to see the show.
We had an unprecedented amount of entries – over 125 romantics wrote to tell us their soppy stories – and my colleague Lindsey and I had the job of reading every single one. We had a delightful couple of hours, full of tears of sentiment and hoots of laughter. From really heart wrenching tales of circumstance to the guy who proposed by dropping the ring into the runny bit of a boiled egg – your emails were wonderful.
Lindsey and I reading all of the entries
We had lots of tales of Paris, weekend’s away, chocolates and flowers but we were looking for something a little more original. It was impossibly hard to choose so in the end we selected five winners and gave them to the Box Office staff to select their over-all favourite.
So, although slightly off-topic – but certainly timely – this week I thought I’d share the tales with you:
The guy who sacrificed the Rugby: Nick Greenslade
“I remember my girlfriend seeing a miniature chest of drawers in an antique shop in Dartmouth whilst we were on holiday. She absolutely adored it but could not afford it (and nor could I at the time). Now Dartmouth is a two and a half hour drive from where I live so it’s a five hour round trip! A few months after our visit I decided to buy it for a special Christmas present but had forgotten the shops name. On the off chance I rang the local fish and chip shop to see if they could suggest a name I might try. By a lucky coincidence the owner of the actual shop was getting fish and chips, and confirmed that they still had the object for sale. I reserved it straight away; but how was I to sneak up to Dartmouth to collect without suspicion? My chance came when the semi final of the 2003 Rugby World Cup was on – England were playing France and I am rugby mad so I pretended I would be watching at a friend’s house. I got back just in time to arouse no suspicions and watched England win the World cup six days later. At Christmas I packed the gift in old television box and labelled it up as a refurbished TV. She still has the biggest of smiles whenever she looks at her favourite piece of furniture!”
Ingenuity, originality AND he sacrificed the rugby? What a man!
Proof that a Valentine’s gesture could come from anywhere: Katherine Daniels
“I’m a lone parent so romance is in short supply, but the most wonderful Valentine’s Day was when my daughter was five, and she surprised me with ‘breakfast’ in bed – the remains of Pick and Mix (the ones she didn’t like), soggy Coco Pops, some blackcurrant squash and a homemade card which I still treasure to this day.”
We wondered whether actually it should be the five year old daughter that wins a prize – as it turns out, she’s 15 now and so will be accompanying her mum to the show tonight!
Luckily, this girl’s chap had a sense of humour: Sam Allen
“Not having been with my (surprisingly still current) partner for very long and being a soppy, romantic girl, I decided to send my new boyfriend a Valentine’s gift. Not wanting to send flowers or choccies to a bloke, I decided on a balloon. I dutifully rang the balloon shop and asked what sorts of balloons they could recommend to send to a guy. After much deliberating I decided on the one with the large gorilla inside which was holding a heart with ‘I love you’ embroidered on it.
I was SO excited and sure that he would be so touched by my romantic gesture; I could hardly wait for him to come home that night…..
He arrived and I was beside myself with the anticipation……………sadly it transpired that the balloon arrived while he was on a bathroom break…there was a very loud tannoy announcement for him and someone had to walk through the factory looking for him with his balloon.
If only the embarrassment ended there…….. I had completely forgotten that he had cycled to work that day…..the balloon had to be tied to his handlebars and he cycled home with it tailing behind him!!!!!
I still have tears in my eyes today when I think of it and sadly they are tears of laughter!!!!
I think the real romance in this story was in her boyfriend cycling home with a gorilla balloon on his handle bars! I’m sure most others would have found a way of ‘accidentally’ popping’ the balloon before cycling home…
Why mobile phones took the romance out of life: Alan Grant
“In 1959, having been at sea with the Royal Navy, and away from my girlfriend for months, we were anchored off Portsmouth and would be alongside the next morning. This was before the days of mobile phones, or even home phones in many cases. That Friday night I went to sleep dreaming of our reunion, and knowing that I would off the ship at 1200 Saturday and then it was a quick dash to Portsmouth Harbour station, and a train to Waterloo station in London to meet my girlfriend at 1400. Regrettably, I had also drawn an early morning duty, which meant I had to be up at 0530 in order to scrub the deck of the main passageway. At 0630 I was roughly shaken by the duty officer telling me that I was on a charge for oversleeping and missing my duty. The first time it had ever happened in my service life, and I was on a charge. At 0900 on the Saturday I saw the Duty Officer who gave me extra work and drill that had to be completed that afternoon. My pleas to be allowed ashore early fell on deaf ears. I finally got away late on Saturday night, and caught the last train to London. I had no way of telling my girlfriend as she had no phone at home. I got in at 2200, some 8 hours later, and found her still sitting on the platform waiting for me. She was tired, cold and hungry, and as this was the last train from Portsmouth she would have gone home if I wasn’t on it. I realised there and then how much she meant to me, and vice versa, so we went to the nearest local pub before it closed (at 2230 in those days). It was called “Dirty Dick’s”, and was noisy, smoky and packed out – lovely. It was in Dirty Dick’s that I asked Sonia to marry me. We wed in 1960, and have been together in one form or another for the past 50 years. We have 3 children and 6 grandchildren, and I am still obsessed with the time, but never need an alarm clock.”
Who’d wait 8 hours these days?! To think what we might have missed out on…
And our winning entry: Jeanette Eames
Winners Alan and Jeanette Eames at the show this evening
“My husband’s and I most romantic moment happened a couple of years ago driving along the Crediton Road, when Eddie Cochran came on the radio singing
C’mon Everybody, when I said to Alan “oh, I could just dance to this”. Before I knew what was happening my husband had pulled the car over into a lay-by, he turned the volume up and pulled me out of the car so we could dance to it, it was a beautiful summer evening and one of my happiest memories, jiving to Eddie Cochran in a lay-by.
I know this romantic moment is not grand by some people’s standards, but it’s special to me and will always make me smile.”
So, just going back to why I like my job, not only did I spend an hour or so last week going through these lovely stories, I then had the glorious task of phoning each of our winners to give them the good news. It was great to hear from so many of you – stay in touch!
Backstage at the Theatre Royal Plymouth 