Love letters

Fiona Armstrong discovers that the secret to a long and happy marriage is a good sense of humour and sharing the odd risqué joke. Illustration Bob Dewar

One of the best things about being a Lord Lieutenant is the chance to take cards from Her Majesty The Queen to all those happy hunters celebrating years of marital harmony.

If requested, a royal message of congratulation can be sent to couples marking a diamond wedding, a sixtieth. It can also be delivered – again, if asked for – on a sixty-fifth anniversary, which is a blue sapphire year, and a seventieth, which involves a very special metal indeed.

Platinum is the symbol for 70 years of wedlock. And platinum is rarer than gold or silver. In fact it is said that all the platinum ever mined could fit into your living room. But then I suppose it depends on how big your living room is…

But back to the card, which is a keepsake. It features a few personal words, a wonderful picture of a smiling monarch, and it comes complete with golden tassel.

The postman delivers it. But when I arrive to present that rather smart envelope with the Buckingham Palace stamp on the front I always have to ask for the secret to such a long union. And folk are not slow in coming forward.

There are the practical things. Make sure you always eat a meal together. Have separate bathrooms. Don’t hog the TV remote. Don’t argue about money.

Then there are the things that don’t cost. Like having a long chat with your other half every day. And making sure you have plenty of laughs together.

Mind, a good old argument can also do wonders for two people who tied the knot many moons before. I’ve been told a number of times that this really clears the air…

Sometimes the husband will wink and tell me they have got this far because he just does as he’s told. At which point, his other half pokes him in the ribs and tells him to behave.

But mostly, those who’ve built lives together, who’ve basked in sunshine and weathered storms, hold hands and tease each other. Like the couple I take a card to this week. Married for sixty years, they are both still happy and youthful. You could hear the party as you went up the gravel drive.

He was in the navy and they wed in 1958. He worked in submarines and was away for much of their early lives together, but he has a twinkle in his eye as he tells me about the letters he wrote home to his young wife.

‘Oh, the Lord Lieutenant doesn’t want to know about that!’ she shrieks.

Oh, but the Lord Lieutenant does want to know...

You’ve heard of SWALK - sealed with a loving kiss. Or MALAYA – my ardent lips await your arrival. Or how about HOLLAND – hope our love lasts and never dies.

Then there are the more risqué ones. NORWICH is particularly saucy. I can’t spell it out in a family magazine, but if you were a serviceman in World War Two you will no doubt know that one… Anyway, this navy man used to put BURMA on the back of his envelopes. I look blankly and he spells it out. Be upstairs and ready my angel. Naughty but nice. We all roar with laughter.

Sixty years of marriage! It is a milestone the chief and I will never reach, unless we live to a hundred and ten.

No, I don’t think we will have the monarch’s representative walking up the path to present us with a celebratory note.

This is a lace year. Next year ivory. Then crystal. At some stage we’ll be home and dry.

‘He has a twinkle in his eye as he tells me about the letters he wrote home to his young wife’