‘We married in the garden with friends – and our chickens’ Nicola & Dan
“BEING THROWN TOGETHER AT HOME HAS BEEN MARVELLOUS”
‘Every day we’re more in love as our relationship matures – the inverse of what happens when you’re younger’
Nicola
After a decade, successful children’s author Nicola Davies had given up on finding a life partner after her divorce – until one day a handsome stranger walked into her village hall in
Llanbedr, Wales…
“I had moved to the Brecon Beacons, back to my homeland, a few years ago. After my divorce I’d been looking for someone for 10 years but it just hadn’t worked out. So I had given up and resigned myself to being single.
“I’d been asked to join the village hall committee, which was a bit, well, slow. But one day in walked this gorgeous man. I thought: ‘Well, THIS is why I’ve been coming to these meetings!’ But he was 10 years younger than me. I thought nothing would happen.
“The pub was between our two houses though, so we’d sometimes meet there. If we did, all we did was talk and talk. We spent a year tiptoeing around each other until one evening conversation drifted to relationships and something shifted. Outside we stood and just looked at each other, but we both turned and walked away.
“The next day I HAD to know if we really had a ‘thing’, so I rang and asked him to come around. He was there in minutes – ran straight across the garden and kissed me.
“He moved in quite quickly and a few months later we married in a marquee in the garden with friends – and our chickens! It felt so right. He thinks so carefully about everyone’s emotions and never comes to a hasty judgment about anyone. And he can do everything – write, draw and he can make anything too. Everyone adores him and my two children are very pleased for me too.
“We managed to move to Pembrokeshire, despite Covid, last year. In a normal year I’d have been travelling a lot on book tours – and being together at home has been marvellous. Not seeing friends and family has been the most painful thing for both of us though.
“When you’re older you know how to distinguish between love and infatuation. You’ve been around the block and you’re better at maintaining your individuality and I think that makes you a better partner.
‘The Song That Sings Us’ (Firefly) by Nicola Davies is out later this year.
“I was single and had given up on the idea that I’d ever find someone. Then I was press-ganged by my aunt into joining the village hall committee and, on my first visit, there she was. And really, for me, that was that. It was quite a moment.
“We all went to the pub afterwards but I don’t remember anyone else.
“Things were effortless from the off. But not in a giddy schoolboy way, it was all tempered with an awareness of reality. I’d learned things rarely work out the way you expect, so I didn’t think anything would happen.
“We spent quite a few months getting to know each other. But it was doing my head in that we weren’t together. I gave her an illustrated book I’d found,
Wonderful Life
by Helen Ward. It’s about a little figure travelling the universe on his own, who finally comes across someone else having given up finding anyone else across the galaxy. But still the penny didn’t drop! It wasn’t exactly a subtle message.
“Finally I thought ‘it’s now or never’ and after she rang me I headed off across her garden, and kissed her. I spoke to her kids before I proposed though, it seemed