Our first meeting happened in 2012 in St Andrews, a small town on the East coast of Scotland, where Kenneth and I were both doing our Master's degree. His degree was in History, while mine was in Medieval English, so we only met in May of that year, after I became friends with one of the historians and was invited to their social events. The first social event we both attended was in Kenneth's honour, by some strange coincidence, because he had managed to get full funding to do his PhD the next year. Even though we had not been introduced, I felt it would only be polite to congratulate him on this achievement. When I went up to him to say congratulations, he went bright red, mumbled something which I think was 'thank you' and ran out of the room as fast as he could. Safe to say I was rather confused afterwards... It took a few more months, a number of social events, and long hours of chatting before he finally asked me out on a date. What follows is a story of paint-splattered shorts, exploding haggis, and Kenneth drinking an entire bottle of (terrible) white wine to soothe his nerves.. But that's a story for another time.

I found the perfect ring for Aya quite quickly. I knew it had to be antique and a little bit different, and I was fortunate enough to stumble across it at the second jewellers I checked. All that was left was the perfect moment. Back in May 2018, it had been almost four years since our last proper holiday. We decided that we'd break that streak by having a weekend away in June. We found a lovely little house in Pas-de-Calais, booked it, and set off after work. When we arrived, I told Aya that I had a little present for her to mark our first holidays in years. She was annoyed because she didn't know we were doing presents. I told her it was just a little thing, and if she bought me an ice cream we'd call it even. After a relaxing Saturday, we decided to go for a hike in Cap Gris-Nez. This was it, my moment. Well...not quite. My moment was frustrated by all of the other tourists taking in the sights. Very inconsiderate of them. Eventually, however, we managed to escape them and found ourselves alone walking along a windy cliff edge. Wanting to find a picturesque spot to propose, I feigned a foot injury. (All right, I didn't have to feign all that much–I had a stone in my shoe which was driving me crazy.) We sat down, I reminded her that I had a present for her, and asked if she wanted it now. When she said yes, I asked her to close her eyes. When she opened them, I had the ring out and asked her if she wanted to get married. Through tears of happiness, she said yes! It's a good thing she did: we still had to hike 6 kilometres back to the car...