Our 20th Wedding Anniversary Part 2

(Or how I met their mother)

30th December 2021

Lois and I got married 20 years ago today, on 30th December 2001.

My part in the story began with other people’s weddings. Every Sunday, another evening of canapés, sweaty dancing and ‘please God by you’s. It all got a bit much. Not yours, obviously — yours was very special. But by the summer of ’99, as one by one my coupled friends cast their lot together in holy (and generally kosher) matrimony, I concluded that it was time for a change of scenery. Between Sunday nights, I was also fed up with life as a junior solicitor. So I decided to carpe the goddam diem, and set off on a year-long trip around the world, ending up in Sydney. No more being a lawyer. No more Jewish weddings.

Two months later, I had indeed made it to New South Wales, and was gainfully employed as a banquets waiter. In a gloriously ironic twist, I contrived to end up working at the Ritz Carlton, the only hotel in Sydney that offered kosher catering, and therefore found myself serving Jewish weddings every single Sunday night. Famously clumsy, it was a role for which my skill set was uniquely unsuited, and so I became the self-styled ‘worst waiter in the southern hemisphere’.

The Worst Waiter in the Southern Hemisphere

I was shacked up with my friend Dean who had taken a few months out from becoming an internationally acclaimed television producer to spend time slumming the backpacker life with me in Bondi. Our furniture consisted of inflatable chairs and a mangy old sofa which we rescued from the side of the street and which triggered strange itching sensations when we sat on it. Most evenings, I’d return from another hapless shift spent emptying guests’ plates of food all over them, to our little Bondi love nest where my pal was waiting with a bottle of pre-mixed vodka red bull and plans for late night pool.

One night, soon after I arrived in Sydney, I arranged to meet my friend (and distant cousin) Emma. An ex-Glaswegian, I’d stayed in touch with her over the years, and she’d already told me about her new pal Lois, whose beauty, according to Emma, was matched by the loveliness of her apartment. As Lois was looking for flatmates, my interest in meeting Lois was primarily based around the prospect of raising living standards for me and my buddy.

We came face to face for the first time in the Paddington Inn, a pub in, well, Paddington — in inner Sydney. My immediate reaction was that she was indeed somebody that I would like to share a flat with. Her first words to me? “You’re quite dark for a Scotsman.”

Instantly besotted, I told Emma that I’d be keen to see her captivating South African friend again. But tracking Lois down proved a challenge, and the following months formed a montage sequence in the movie in my head (WT ‘Chasing Lois’). Emma fed me information about where she might be hanging out with Lois, and I turned up at random venues –nightclubs, beaches, funerals, always just missing her, always wandering forlornly for signs of the elusive girl who’d made such an impression.

In December 1999, I caught up with Lois. Emma gave me a tip that they’d be playing pool at the Hotel Bondi, so I turned up there — full of unjustified confidence that, finally, I would get the girl — to discover that I was the interloper on some sort of weird date, with Emma as Lois’ chaperon and a beefy Canadian guy as the main attraction. Though I seemed to be playing a cameo role in someone else’s story, Canadian Guy made the mistake of being good at pool, so while he stayed at the table potting balls, I chatted to Lois. That smile! I liked this girl a lot.

And apparently I made an impression on Lois too, because Emma gave me another tip off. This one was a lot more promising — I was to come to Lois’ apartment, where Lois and Emma would be watching a video and eating pizza. No Canadian Guy invited. I could hardly contain myself at work, dropping a whole tray of glasses in excitement, and went straight from my shift to enter Lois’ home in Vaucluse for the first time.

Lois welcomed me warmly (that smile again). I asked if I could use the phone to pick up my messages, as I’d been out working all day and had left my mobile at home. I immediately heard Emma’s voice down the phone, and I announced to the room, “it’s from you, Emma”.

That first message was unexpected and extraordinary. In it, Emma explained in some detail how taken Lois was with me, seemingly she was well up for it. I tried to keep my composure while my internal monologue screamed in triumph, “she pure fancies me — we are on!”

Jubilant about this development, I failed to observe the reaction elsewhere in the room (and at this point, I have to briefly shift to Lois’ perspective, and recount what she later told me). Lois knew that Emma had left me a very encouraging message, and assumed that if I turned up, I did so on the basis that I already knew that she was keen. So Lois was mortified to discover that I was standing in her apartment hearing all this for the first time (yes folks, we were in our late 20s but communicating with the mindset of the playground).

While I smugly watched the film (American History X) and munched on my pizza, glowing at the prospect of untold promise ahead, Lois sat shaking her head at the moron who had turned up without listening to his phone messages first. By the time Ed Norton had disowned his Neo Nazi past, she was in full “fuck you” mode. She explained that she was tired, and that we must leave. A little disappointed, I said,

“Well, I’ll see you at the party next week”.

Lois replied, “maybe you will, maybe you won’t”.

This was the first time Lois dismissed me with a few harsh words. It wasn’t the last.

The party in question was a big Xmas event being held by a girl called Debbie. Everyone was going — it was ticket only, and Emma had arranged for tickets for me, Dean and our good pal Rob. I had to pick them up from Emma on the night — guess where from?

Lois was hosting a gathering before the main event. What our children now refer to as ‘pre’s’. I was not invited to Lois’ pre’s, so I got together with a few of my friends nearby — a sort of pre-pre — and popped into Lois’ to get the tickets.

It was a crowded room with music blaring, but I saw them immediately. Lois and Canadian Guy. On the balcony. He had his stupid muscly arms around her. She looked up, saw me, smiled, and turned her attention back to Canadian Guy’s biceps.

I collected the tickets from Emma, and walked the long walk back to my friends. It wasn’t going to happen.

I almost didn’t go to the party. Partly because of the Lois thing, but also because we didn’t have any alcohol. Ignorant of Sydney’s strict licensing laws, we’d failed to plan ahead. A catastrophic error. But in the end we decided to give it an hour.

The party was in full flow when we arrived to an amazing garden overlooking the Pacific. Lois was already there, dancing with Canadian Guy. She came over and spoke to me for a bit, even offered me a swig of her drink. Then I regrouped with my friends, resigned to a drink-less, Lois-less night.

But as I watched her dancing, came a decision which changed everything. My Wayne’s World moment.

“Oh yes, she will be mine”, I whispered to myself.

I went back to Lois and invited her to come talk with me. She came. We looked out over the star-lit ocean. I’ve no idea what we spoke about, but I couldn’t have been happier, chatting to this amazing woman. I continued with my slightly alpha-ish and entirely uncharacteristic determination.

“So are you going to be with him, or are you going to be with me?” I asked her.

“I’ll be with whoever I want to be with,” Lois replied.

But she took my hand as she said it.

Eventually it was time to leave. One complication. Lois had arranged a lift from a friend, and Canadian Guy’s bag was in the car, which is why, 10 minutes later, I found myself sharing the back seat of that car with Canadian Guy. Canadian Guy was sad because Lois no longer seemed interested.

“You’re alright,” he complained, big drunken arm around me, “but this one, I don’t understand…”, pointing at Lois and shaking his head. I shook my head too, in duplicitous sympathy.

We dropped Canadian Guy at a bus stop somewhere in the Eastern Suburbs in the early hours of Christmas Day, and I gallantly escorted Lois home.

A week later came the dawn of a new millennium. Lois and I did not spend it together, because Dean and I had set off on a strange road trip in a yellow 1970s campervan. A whole other tale. But as I sat on a cliff in Byron Bay watching the sun rise over the Pacific and introduce the year 2000, I imagined what lay ahead for me. I pictured Lois’ smile, and wondered if it would feature.

It sure did. I moved in with Lois soon after, then we went back to London together, where we got secretly (but not really) married a few months later. I’ve already told that story. 2 years on from that mad life-changing Xmas Eve, we returned to Sydney to celebrate our future together. On a wonderful day 20 years ago, we got married at the Central Synagogue in Bondi, and partied at the Rose Bay Yacht Club. One more wedding to complete the circle.

I never saw Canadian Guy again (his name was Ryan, incidentally). I hope he’s well and happy, wherever he is, and I hope he’s managed to maintain the genuinely impressive muscle tone in his arms. But I’m not sorry that just that once, I pushed harder, and got the girl. That girl, that extraordinary woman, who came back to London and changed my life, who changed all of our lives.

Happy anniversary Lois.