I’m writing this as I’m likely to forget it. But my wife and I had a ‘date night’ last week, and it was great. The details will pass with time. Wonderfully, we didn’t take a single photo or upload any updates to social media as we didn’t particularly need the round of applause.
In late October, we passed our 12-year anniversary. We’ve now been together for fourteen years. We were the first to get married in our friendship circle, as young and naive as virginal Christians.
‘I’m just so fascinated by you both,’ said a friend, who was intrigued rather than deterred by my insistence that dinner at our home is usually very flat and dull. We have a routine with our small children inscribed in stone to assist with a consistent bedtime.
Most of married life - successful married life - is incredibly dull and domestic. Em and I don’t fight, and as we’ve matured, we’ve settled into our respective lanes of domestic partnership. We love working together.
It’s irritating, I know. But I can only say I’m fortunate and genuinely enjoy the privilege of being with one of my best mates. Em’s the best - a fact almost everyone who meets her agrees with.
But here was the weekend.
Drop the kids off at school. First task: find breakfast. Em lusts for the Camp Hill Antique Centre. ‘But I feel like that’s a very me thing,’ she says.
‘I’m happy to go if I can sit out the front with a book,’ I reply. ‘Frankly, that would be bliss.’
‘Aren’t we supposed to be connecting?’
‘We’ve got all day to connect, and we are. It’s parallel play!’
So that kills the morning. We check into our hotel, the Crystalbrook Vincent at Howard Smith Wharves. It’s great. We quickly walk into the Valley to have lunch in the Eucalyptus Room at Perspective Dining in the Valley.
Despite being foodies, we have never taken part in a degustation menu. We pop that cherry at Perspective with Chef Andrew McCrea, who does a seven course DESERT DINING experience over about two hours. Each dish comes with a story, and is a knockout. As is usual in fancy venues, we have to stifle childish giggles for no other reason than the atmosphere demands we act like Goddam adults. We barely manage.
We are stuffed and collapsed in the hotel. We have booked to see two films at the Brisbane Film Festival up the road at New Farm Cinema. We leave the hotel with a plan to catch an e-scooter. Three minutes out the door, we see a wall of rain streaking across the Brisbane River. Within a minute, it is on us. We are on the wharf and cannot find shelter. Hail begins to clatter from the sky.
We scream and yell and find ourselves underneath the Storey Bridge with a handful of other soaked people, unable to speak to each other from the storm's noise. There’s a bird on the steel rafters who is singing for shelter. Great rivulets of water rush across the pavement.
The entire thing vanishes within ten minutes, and we proceed with our plans. We order a drink and food at a bar near the cinema. The food never shows up in time, and we rush inside. We pay six dollars for stale popcorn and watch Rumors - a surreal satire about G7 leaders becoming stranded. It’s hilarious and fantastic. Straight after, we watch The Room Next Door, a miserably written script that would’ve looked good as a pitch document, starring Tilda Swinton and Julieanne Moore.
We return to the hotel and go upstairs to the rooftop bar for food, but it’s Brisbane on a Friday and after 930pm, so the kitchen is closed (?). We return to our rooms, order a cheeseburger each, and eat it on bed while watching Grand Designs Australia and shouting that the couple in Buderim trying to build a mansion on the side of a hill are FOOLS.
We go to sleep.
We return home and plan grocery shopping, turf management and school activities for the week. We take a child to dance class. Life rolls on.
It was pretty great. Happy anniversary.
I love this.