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We had quite a time persuading Bernie and Richard to take a proper honeymoon. Their first idea was to get married on Saturday and for Richard to be back in work on the Monday. However I eventually forced him to recognise that such a course of action would be sure to encourage all sorts of silly banter about the wedding night and so on – much better to give people a few days to get it all out of their system in his absence. It was July, so Bernie, being an academic, was completely free of work commitments, so it was ridiculous not to go away and have some time alone together, but they somehow both seemed reluctant. I almost wonder whether they weren’t sure that they would find enough talk about for a whole week.
In the end Stan and Sylvia Corbridge (the friends whose son Bernie had so nearly married twenty years earlier) took them in hand and organised the rental of a small cottage out in the wilds of Northumbria. Bernie agreed at once – mainly because they could call in to see Stan and Sylvia while they were there and it would give Richard a chance to get to know them properly – and Richard, in his usually self-effacing way, just went with the flow.
Naturally only Bernie and Richard know what went on during those seven days, but I do know that they only called in on the Corbridges once (on the way home to Oxford) instead of the ‘two or three times’ that Bernie had proposed. So I rather fancy they found more to do alone together than they’d imagined!