Yesterday was without doubt not only the best Valentine’s Day I have ever had, but simply one of the best days I have ever had, and this smiley face looks nowhere near happy enough to represent how I feel now It all got off to a rather exciting start when Babel arrived at my house with a beautiful bunch of flowers for me. That was certainly rather unexpected, as he isn’t exactly the romantic type, and if that had been my only present of the day I would have been more than content! I’ve just been downstairs admiring them and trying to take a decent photo, because the very tragic thing is that I’m going to Wigan tomorrow and much as I would like to take them with me, I don’t think I can By the time I come home they’ll almost certainly be dead, so I needed a pictures to commemorate them!

Babel and I headed off to our favourite Harvester to have a spot of lunch. It was actually rather busy, but the time we had to wait for a table was hardly enough time for me to open all my presents! Babel had not only got me a very pretty card, but a whole bag full of gifts. I started to feel a bit bad that I had been completely unable to think of anything to get for him, instead having to rely on the assistance of his Amazon wishlist I was too busy unwrapping to feel guilty for long though! I was rather perplexed when one of my first presents was a book by John Steinbeck, but it all became clear when I opened my next present and found a copy of the same book.. but in Czech Methinks it will be a very long time indeed before I’m anywhere near good enough to be able to read it, but it will certainly help to give me motivation and I thought it was a really excellent idea. Babel’s right that when I was learning German, one of the things which helped me most reading novels

Not all my presents were so serious. I received the most beautiful set of duck ornaments you ever did see – a bright shiny yellow mommy duck with two cute little baby ducks to swim behind her. There were also two rather enormous, squishy looking packages which when opened revealed two absolutely adorable soft toys. The first was a gigantic duck with a face which instantly reminded me of Orville off the telly. My Orville is yellow rather than green, but nevertheless there’s a distinct likeness there and hence no other name I could give him The other toy was something I have never seen before – a gorgeous white fluffy swan, which is absolutely beautiful to stroke. Never having had a swan toy before, I was initially rather stumped as to what might be an appropriate name, but having given it some thought I have decided upon Cyril. I actually dislike the name Cyril in ordinary circumstances, but in this instance I think it feels quite appropriate. Swans are after all rather posh and aloof

Those weren’t actually my main present! My main present (or at least, what I believed my main present to be at the time!) was the most stunning computer mouse you have ever seen in your life. I have a slightly grotty mouse for my work computer but have been lacking one for my own computer ever since Babel bought it for me at Christmas. I’m not always the best at using the touch keypads, although with practice I have been getting an awful lot better over the past few months, so having a mouse will be a real bonus for those moments were random misclicking is not desired. More than that, this mouse is totally amazing. It’s hard to describe, but it’s sort of transparent and inside it you can see blue water with two little yellow ducks bobbing about. A picture of this and all my other presents will have to follow at some point, but I was out all day today so I’ve forgotten to take one

Things started to take a turn for the worse when the waitress informed me that the tomato pasta I had ordered was coming with mushroom sauce instead, but actually it didn’t taste too bad and any disappointment was more than made up for by the fact that we took the unusual step of treating ourselves to a pudding. I had a highly delicious slice of lemon cake, and it seemed like life couldn’t really get much better Having stolen some spare bread rolls from the salad buffet, we got back into the Moosemobile and set off for Stratford in an attempt to use the remaining hour of daylight to feed the ducks. We just about managed to park and wander to the river before darkness started to fall, although finding some ducks to feed turned out to be more difficult than I had anticipated. There were plenty of wildfowl on the water, but a lot of the birds which approached us were Canada Geese, which I have to confess that I utterly detest. In fact I’m a bit scared of them, and there were two in particular which got out of the water and came far closer to me than I was comfortable with Some nice, sweet, harmless sort of ducks did put in an appearance towards the end though, and I had fun throwing them the remnants of my bread

I was just about to suggest we turn back to the town, when Babel announced that he had forgotten one of my presents. After what happened when he said that at Christmas I probably should have twigged that he had a trick up his sleeve, but instead I told him that he’d already given me enough presents and perhaps he should save it for another day. He didn’t seem to want to, and suggested that I close my eyes and he’d give it to me. I wasn’t really very keen on that sort of game, having been highly suspicious of it even as a child, but I just about managed to obey. When I was told I could open my eyes, I initially couldn’t see him… because he appeared to be crouching in the mud Let’s just say I was rather confused! In fact it would be better if Babel wrote this blog post, because to me everything is a blur and I can’t actually remember what happened But the salient point is that he presented me with an absolutely beautiful ring, and we are now engaged

At least, I think we’re engaged; I was so surprised by the proposal that I seemingly forgot to say yes!

But of course I intended to say yes, and I’m so happy now I can’t really describe it! Babel seems to have a very good taste in jewellery, because the ring he’s bought is absolutely perfect for me. I never normally wear any jewellery at all, so he’s managed to find a ring which is really delicate and doesn’t look out of place on my rather small finger. It’s white gold and sparkly, and at some point I promise a picture will follow

My family were if anything even more surprised than me by the news, but all very pleased. My mother was very impressed by the fact that Babel has got himself an engagement ring as well, and my aunt pretty much burst into tears when I told her. The only person who appears not to be thrilled is my little five year old cousin. When my aunt told him the news this morning, he apparently got a bit upset and thought being engaged meant I was going to go away somewhere and would never see him again. He seemed particularly concerned about what was going to happen to my room and all the toys in it!!

So… wow, Babel and I are finally engaged. For me it’s still sinking in, but I’m nevertheless ridiculously happy and I just wish I was going into the office tomorrow to show everyone my ring! Thank you so much Babel – I’m very, very lucky to be with you

Tags: engagement, Valentine's Day

This entry was posted on Monday, February 16th, 2009 at 12:00 am and is filed under Soppiness. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.