One Year On

Today is my first wedding anniversary, which must have been why I was woken up at twenty past six this morning by the sound of firecrackers being let off outside my flat. The whole day is still so vivid, so near and yet so very long ago. Sitting now in a windowless office in eastern China while my wife sleeps by the banks of the Elbe, I remember the madcap dash across the park to the register office, slivovice in the back garden until 3am, London in late August, the two-month honeymoon in India, five months sitting on a swivel chair in a call centre and the good and the bad of everything in between. Happy anniversary, Kacenka. I'll see you soon.