Ok so I thought I’d let you all in on mine and Scott’s love story as you could call it – we are no romeo and juliet but it still makes me feel all slushy inside!
We met when I had just turned seventeen and scott had just turned 18. It was autumn, I was studying at college and Scott had just started university. At the time I was working in a little known place called East Street market in south east london, its far from glamourous (in fact its a real crappy place) but money is money and I worked in a great shop selling leather and sheepskin jackets with a great team including my mum. I’d worked in the same shop as a saturday assistant every year from the age of 12 (the perks of your mum being the boss) and had always started in the September and finished in the January as this was their busiest time. Right outside the shop is a busy market with hundreds of stalls and hundreds of ‘stall boys’ (young guys working for pennies to give the stallholders a break!) and so as you can imagine my teenage crushey self could see the perks of working in such an environment – particularly when you’re the one sent out on the tea and sandwich run throughout the day!
Anyway this particular September morning I started work for the winter again and had just got into the shop, taken off my awful (in hindsight) grey puffa jacket and was standing underneath the door heater with a cup of peppermint tea trying to keep warm! The two stalls outside our shop had been, for as long as I can remember, the stalls of Lawrence and Maurice – one of whom sold t-shirts and tracksuits and the other towels and bedding. I had known these two all of my life and they were great fun, crazy and cheeky and loud like a good market trader can be but really nice guys (not to mention old enough to be my dad and acting like my dad sometimes telling me my kilt skirts were too short hehe!) and somebody at work was telling me about how Lawrence had a new young guy working on his stall with him when I looked out the window and saw the (very perky) backside of a grey-jumpered and conversed boy leaning over the stall. ‘Is that the new boy?’ I asked my mum, ‘That’s definately not lawrence’s bum’ and that was my first sighting of the guy that I am now marrying!
In the course of the morning we got introduced by about fifty different people, all of whom said ‘oh alex you have to meet scott, i think you two will get along’ or ‘oh scott have you met alex yet, she’s a great girl, just the sort of girl you need eh?’ and by that afternoon it had become a running joke that we had met! Scott made me laugh when I came out of the shop for about the 100th time that day and he said ‘Oh you must be alex, please to meet you’ and that was it. Head over heels, teenage crush, completely besotted with his gorgeous blue eyes!
Well we were good friends for a couple of months, laughing and talking, me getting in trouble with the boss (who loved being matchmaker really) for spending more time outside talking to scott than inside doing any work! As I mentioned before it was my job to run and get teas for everyone, well lets just say that it gave me a great excuse to speak to scott when I went out – Scott had never drunk so much tea in his life and I had never been so happy to get up on a Saturday morning! There were several embaressing incidents during this time of flirty friendship – once I was watching (discreetly not stalker like) scott out of the window of the shop, he noticed me watching and, deciding to be a bit of a flash git jumped off of the stall onto a cardboard box which he thought was full… it wasn’t and he went right through it, skidded about five foot and landed on his butt = hilarious moment where i had to duck down behind the clothes rails to hide my laughter! Another was when scott came into the shop to use our bathroom and I locked him out the back without realising – he was banging on the door for 20 minutes before anyone heard him and rescued him, to this day he is adamant that I did it on purpose! Oh and the worst was when i went on my tea run and the guy in the cafe drew kisses all over scott’s cup and wouldn’t give me another cup so I had to present scott a polystyrene cup covered in kisses and his name, not good when your 17 and trying to look cool!
Fast forward to christmas eve and we were all in a festive mood, i’d hung mistletoe at the shop door hoping to get that elusive kiss, had worn ‘fun’ light-up earrings in the shape of christmas trees and we had spent the whole day laughing, swapping stories and debating over which christmas songs were the worst. At the end of the day I hung around hoping to get a christmas kiss before he left when someone came into the shop and mentioned that he had gone home, i was devastated – until I heard my name being called outside and scott was leaning out the side of the van to give me a peck on the cheek before christmas! A couple of days later and we were back at work and Scott finally (after lots of prompting from friends and just about everyone who worked in East street) got up the guts to ask me for my number, at which point i nearly ruined my chances by insulting his ‘remote control’ style phone oops! We spent the next few nights and days texting constantly, even texting each other all night on new years eve despite both being at parties. And we had our first date on 3rd January.
The date in itself was quite funny, and what some might call a disaster but we both had a great time. It started with Scott taking me to ‘an amazing place i’ve never been before where theres this really cool milkshake shop’ which turned out to be greenwich where i went every week with friends from college, and the milkshake shack that I spent half my wages in – poor guy must have been thrilled when i ruined the excitement! Then it was a walk in greenwich park, sitting on the bench drinking our shakes and watching a fox in the green, then to the cinema to see Pan’s labyrinth, the first ever movie i had agreed to watch that had subtitles – I was dreading it but its now one of my favourite movies and I love subtitled films now too! We went for dinner afterwards at a lovely little italian restaurant, where scott managed to flick his fork and a forkful of lasagne over the room, and in my rush to pay the bill whilst he went to the toilet I knocked over our table with empty plates and glasses on it. It was made a little less embaressing by the waitress concluding that ‘you’re meant to be together!’. Clearly clumsy people attract :-)We had our first kiss that night at the bus stop, and, like a gentleman he dropped me home.
So fast forward two brilliant years, filled with trips to Brighton and Birmingham, a fantastic caravan holiday, lots of nights snuggled up together, watching movies (he introduced me to casablanca and I got him to watch Love actually about a million times), walks along the southbank at night, karaoke with my college friends, dropping out of uni for scott, starting uni for me and generally just being so in love it made people make vomiting noises at us we started talking about getting engaged. We chose the ring together just before christmas and it was ordered in for the week after christmas. Scott was working on the day it arrived in store so I took a sneaky trip up to the west end and picked it up from the jewellers, went home (I had moved into his mums house with him) made a romantic spaghetti meal with candles and chocolate dessert and spent the evening in one of those lovey-dovey moods. When it got late I suggested going for a walk down to our favourite spot on the southbank, and so we walked out past tower bridge and through back streets and up and down riverwalk stairs until we got to this gorgeous spot in the shadow of the oxo tower where the trees are lit up with blue fairylights at night. ‘If you were going to propose to me where would you do it?’ I asked Scott, thankfully his reply was ‘Here’. ‘You can if you want the ring is in my handbag’ – i don’t think he believed me until he got it out of the box, dropped to one knee in a puddle and proposed!
Lily at four months ^^
Six months later we found out that I was pregnant – this was completely unexpected as I had been told when I was sixteen that because of my endometriosis I would likely be unable to have children. We were thrilled and couldn’t wait to become parents, it did however mean putting our November 5th wedding on hold as there was no way I was getting married looking like a hippo OR with people whispering about ‘shotgun weddings’. And so now here we are, with our gorgeous one year old daughter (I attached the snaps because i’m one of those crazy proud mummys!), happier than ever and excited for the big things that are happening for us – me starting my own wedding planning business, scott taking an open degree and planning our small, very budget conscious wedding 🙂 and above all just completely utterly in love!
xxx
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