How he put a ring on it

[I will just say, I'm desperately sorry if this turns into a gushy blog. I don't think it will, but in case it does, here's this. Slightly explicit, but hilarious.]

I'm not very good at describing romantic details.  So this story is probably hackneyed rather thoroughly.

It started off on a beautiful Saturday. Gorgeous. Clear skies. Blue. Crisp and clear. And Fran was acting rather strangely.  At first he said he was off to Newcastle and would meet me up in the afternoon.  I had Chad's Day festivities (the inexplicable pictures of me with a cow outside the cathedral) and was participating in those on and off. But after the service, he called and asked to meet up for breakfast. Heck yes!

He seemed excited and kept saying, "I want to tell you something but I can't!" And after breakfast cryptically rushed off and I didn't hear from him for the rest of the gorgeous afternoon.  I hung out in the MCR. Watched movies, played croquet, enjoyed the lovely day, and the amazingness of Chads.  It wasn't until 5 I heard from him, and this was strange again.  On Saturdays Fran and I are generally inseparable.  He wanted to meet up immediately. Why and wherefore? To watch Wigan of course.

Me and Jessica enjoying game of croquet on Chad's Day

When I went to meet him he was on the phone.  He looked a bit different.  Not only had he shaved his three day goatee, but had his hair cut! Without my prompting that I was dating a homeless man? Inconceivable! And he was happy to see me, but kept his distance like he didn't want me to hear his phone conversation. So I galloped off to poundland and left him to it.

He found me minutes later thoroughly excited and exhilarated. He was practically bouncing up and down.  Must be because Wigan is actually being shown on television today, I thought. But he kept saying, I want to show you what I bought, but I just can't.

So we wandered to a pub to watch the Latics. Fran was thoroughly agonized (they lost badly), but in the midst of the game, he received a phone call on skype, and without more than four words, ran out of the pub to take the call-- with no jumper or jacket. He was gone 20 minutes. Twenty minutes of his favorite football team went by. Our food arrived and I tried not to eat all of the scampi myself.

When he finally showed up, he was freezing but very happy. And only responded to my raised eyebrow with, "Ah good! Food's here!"

That night at Chads Day we played laser tag, dressed up and had our photos taken in the camera booth, watched others screaming aloud to their silent disco headphones, and watched several other films. It was a late night.

The next day, Fran flopped on my sofa and couldn't move.  "I'm so emotionally spent," he said. "I've had all these emotional conversations and I'm not used to having them without you around. Let's watch  some Scooby Doo." This in itself was astounding because we had planned to go to a car boot sale.  Now, if anything comes between Fran and a car boot sale, so help him God. So we hung out at my house until noon, watching Scooby Doo. Then at 12, Fran bounded up, seemingly fully recovered and announced we were going to go to Finchdale Priory and walk to the pub from there. We'd have plenty of time to get back from our evening 5 pm service.

We had been to Finchdale Priory before and loved it.  This time we knew there was a pub we could walk to. After a game of "Pooh sticks," (in which I lost), we meandered to the pub.  We thought it'd be a delightful walk in the woods.  It was a country road meaning no sidewalk, mud splattered, mole-hilled, cars-careening-around-the-bend road.  And the pub wasn't a real pub, but a golf course.

the golf course

We walked into the little reception and they had three items on their menu. I am now a firm believer that no matter what pub in Britain, no matter how dodgey, the safest thing to order is fish and chips.  Which were delicious.  It had a coal fireplace and was rather empty.  Fran was delighted because when he first moved to Durham he had tried to play golf at this very place, but had never managed the time, and lo and behold we were there. He even asked me to take a picture of him, because Fran loathes photos. Simply hates them. (Had you scrolled through facebook and wondered why you couldn't find more of Fran?)

the "pub"

the picture fran demanded I take of him

After lunch, Fran gave me a sideways glance and asked if we wanted to do some driving.  I happily agreed, and we spent the next forty five minutes perfecting our swing.  We walked back to the priory along the life-threatening road.  We kept trying to hold hands which led to one of us either being shoved into a hedgerow or being nudged into a car.

the golfer

the bungling amateur

We came back to the path that led down to the priory.  Now the priory is on a river and the hill beside it is rather high, and we happened to be on this high hill.  We walked down until we were on eye-level with priory and the river just below, and as we were walking this kind of excited energy began between us.  It happened on our first (real) date to Arthur's seat and again, in a moment outside the Louve in Paris.  It had always led to big things. (Outside the Louve, I realized that as hard as I had tried not to, I really liked this stoner. On Arthur's seat, we started dating for real.)

By this time we're both really excited, and Fran bursts out, "I have something I really really want to show you." And he's so excited, he pulls a green box out of his pocket and opens it. There was a darling ring, and he asked me a rather important question, and then realized he wasn't on one knee. So he quickly crouched, and I quickly said yes, and the ring fit.

And then we promptly freaked out.

We were happy, but the magnitude sort of hit us in the gut. We played a game of Pooh Sticks (I won this time.) We wandered around the priory, and kept saying quietly aloud, "We're really engaged. We're really getting married," like we couldn't hardly believe it ourselves. We kept having to convince each other.  We demanded a stranger take pictures of us. We were going to head back to the car (just in time to make our 5 pm service).   But then we realized we needed a walk, so we walked along the river and talked and let our legs expend some energy.

the moment I won pooh sticks

He told me how he picked out the ring.  How he wanted to go to Newcastle but saw that in Durham there was a nice store that was having a very large sale.  How he wanted white gold, but didn't like any of them. How he reluctantly looked at real gold.  How he saw it and just loved it. How it was the only one left.  How it fit his wee finger perfectly. And how it fit mine just right (despite all my other fingers being jammed from years and years of basketball).  We were more overwhelmed than excited.  I called my sister.  She was more excited than we were.

the moment we demanded strangers take a photo of us

And then we called our families.  Turns out Fran had talked to his parents all afternoon on Saturday.  Turns out the phone call in the pub was him asking my dad.  Turns out he had met with our Durham pastor who explained the importance of Ephesians 5. And the flood of lovely calls and texts were completely overwhelming.  Not in a thousand years would I have ever guessed so many people would be this delighted to wish us well.

And how do we feel now, you ask? Overwhelmed, exhausted, but very happy.