Seven years...

...and happily we still kinda like each other (we both begrudgingly admitted as much yesterday), even though this is supposedly the year of the 'seven year itch '.
Yesterday, April 15th, was our wedding anniversary. We had a Millenium wedding. I know there was big rush for weddings in the year 2000 but even now I can't quite understand why: if you needed to get married in a year with a row of zeroes in it to make your big day 'special', then I reckon you're in trouble - but in retrospect it does have the advantage that it makes it easier to keep track of how many years it's been (as if you could ever forget): this being 2007, it is clearly now seven years for us.
Seven years is your 'copper' wedding anniversary - that's not a joke, it really is: two children, two house moves, two changes of job for Nini, three for me, and we are not even up to the semiprecious metals yet. If you are wondering what on earth could rank below copper in the 'desirable materials' stakes, then from memory it's paper, linen, wood, leather, fruit & flowers, and iron. Presumably if you've been together for under a year then it's just ash (3 months?), or maybe coal (6 months?). Next year it's something really exciting like tin, or aluminium, or possibly cubic zirconium.

Sadly, we have made things difficult for ourselves (almost marriage-destroyingly difficult, ironically) by deciding, back when it was year one, that we would start a tradition of exchanging anniversary gifts that contained the anniversary material. The first six years were easy enough. But copper....copper is an absolute pig. Nobody makes anything worthwhile out of copper these says, it's all stainless steel. The only things I could find were the three things that Nini had expressly said she didn't want: a copper kettle, a homeopathic wrist bangle or some kind of Indian ornamental bowl. I can't blame her, I wouldn't want those cluttering up the house either.

Sadly, the suggestions I have been supplied with by friends to overcome this problem, have been either stupid, or crass, or worthless...or stupid and crass and worthless. These included such lowlights as a policeman strippogram ( "It's a copper. Geddit?") and making a sculpture out of 15mm pipe tubing and Dalcop plumbers fittings ( "It'll be really personal..."). Ebay provided little help either: it's suprising how much people are prepared to pay for an antique copper jelly mould in the shape of a fish, even when you assume they too are only bidding on it half-heartedly and also think that in all honesty it's a bit shit.

Nini solved this problem by innovatively copperleafing a papier mache letter 'P', and setting really low expectaions for weeks in advance that my present would "be rubbish". Cunning. She does tell me there's plenty of copperleaf left, should I find something suitable to cover it with. I'm thinking a papier mache letter 'N' might do the trick, our initials can then gleam dully together from opposite ends of the fireplace..

Sadly, in the course of writing this I have realised that yesterday I failed to give her the one thing I was able to successfully arrange: a card. It's a wonder I've lasted seven years, it really is...
I have also found out that seven years is either copper or wool.
Bah, wool! How easy is that? The shops are full of jumpers....