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Twenty years have gone by! Twenty years since the day Katy and I were married in a ceremony that now seems like a blur but which I remember was a nervous occasion for me. I hadn�t met most of my wife�s relations and their first experience of me was listening to the groom�s speech! Not being one who likes public speaking, the speech wasn�t much so I immediately had ground to make up. I am also 18 years older than my lovely wife, so no doubt a few uncles and aunties were wondering why such a pretty young girl was marrying this bloke of 40 something. I expect some thought this will never last, but here we are, 20 years later and we still hold hands when we walk down the street.

So, what have we achieved in those 20 years? Two lovely children, first a daughter followed a couple of years later by a son. So many babies look like small monkeys but ours were gorgeous � or maybe that�s just because they were ours. I expect every parent thinks their offspring is beautiful, although only a mother could love some of the babies I have seen!

The local schools in the area where we lived were not impressive, so we placed both children in private schools. The cost was just about bearable but grew exponentially as they got older. The problem was that once in the independent school it was difficult to take them out. They had made friends and were both benefiting from the small classes and better teachers. To take them out of that school and place them in what is no doubt an inferior learning environment would have been unfair, although there were many occasions when we came close to doing so. Thankfully our son passed his exams to the local Grammar School which of course is free and enabled us to keep paying our daughter�s fees � she failed the entrance examination by a wide margin. I think she did so on purpose as she wanted to stay with her friends, a tactic one has to admire if it wasn�t for the cost to our bank balance.

School days have now ended, thankfully; and we can now set about building up our financial strength. We have lived in rented property all this time as the burden of the school fees never allowed us to build up a deposit sufficient to buy our own home, so owning our own house is our next objective. Unfortunately our timing is not good as the financial difficulties in the country�s economy during the last few years have resulted in a restrictive lending policy and mortgages are difficult to get. Not so long ago mortgages of 95% of the property�s value were there for the asking. Last week we applied for a loan of 65% of the property�s value and were refused! How the lender can feel insecure with a cushion of 35% of valuation is beyond my comprehension. It seems as though the pendulum has swung to the other extreme. But we will soldier on, keep saving, and waiting for normality to return.

The 20th wedding anniversary is known as the China Wedding, so to recognise this I bought my wife a [http://ceramiccards.co.uk/anniversary-plates.html unique wedding anniversary plate] with our names and the date of our anniversary glazed onto the plate.

Here�s to the next 20 years!

This article was first published at [http://157.82.81.13/groups/lsbm/wiki/c3a54/Wedding_Anniversaries.html this website]