One in a Hundred.

My uncle and aunt celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary yesterday. They are my ‘lynchpin’ cousin’s parents, so it was an absolute privilege to be invited to celebrate with them. We had a beautiful meal at a pub with the best name (The Unruly Pig). Before we went I had struggled to find a card. It’s always tricky to find any kind of card in December, as my Mum always used to complain when we were looking for my sister’s birthday, but a card to celebrate 60 years of marriage seemed very rare. My Aunt told me that her doctor had said that she was lucky to have made it, as only one in one hundred couples reach this milestone.

I’ve trawled the Office of National Statistics websites for wedding anniversary stats because I’m that sad kind of person but I can’t find anything official to back up the doctor’s claim. I remember when my grandparents had been married 50 years, it was treated as some kind of miracle. We had a party in a village hall with a big cake. My Nan was resplendent in a sequinned outfit, delighting in her score of grandchildren, running feral around the hall with balloons. Grandad sat in the corner, sucking toffee with a twinkle in his eye, like an off-duty Father Christmas. Everyone kept saying how amazing it all was. When it was my parent’s Golden Wedding Anniversary, they didn’t seem very old and it didn’t feel like such a big deal.

Lynchpin had arranged for her parents to be collected in a vintage white Rolls Royce and brought to the pub where we we were all secretly waiting. Because I’m like Arthur Christmas (“I have to worry. It’s the only thing I’m good at.”) I contemplated the risk of shouting, ‘surprise!’ at a couple of eighty year olds (this is poetic license and not meant as an insult to my Aunt who hasn’t reached that number yet). However, it was all fine and their surprised faces showed no trace of an impending stroke. My Uncle is a quieter version of my Dad with more hair, so I shouldn’t have been surprised that they would take it all in their stride. He and the Russian spy are the only two of the eight siblings left. My dad always referred to him as the ‘good one’. Apparently, he was always well behaved at school, getting on with everything in a quiet way. It was clear, though, he still had the family sense of humour and the trademark family kindness.

We had a brilliant afternoon. My sister was on sparkling form, as we told her, ‘my naughty little sister stories.’ Everyone laughed about the time she covered herself in creosote five minutes before a family Christening because she didn’t want to wear the pretty dress. Lynchpin’s lovely friend concluded that there were two kinds of people in the world: square (which included me and her) and funny (which was my sister and Lynchpin). It can be quite harsh to hear that you’re not funny and Lynchpin’s husband wasn’t sure he liked that bit of the description, even though he had to confess that he was square, with an encyclopaedic knowledge of skip sizes.

My uncle told how he’d joked with the postman on receiving his card from the Queen.
“A card from the palace, you’re not 100, are you?” The surprised postman asked.
“Nope,” my uncle told him.
“I didn’t think so.”
“Ninety-five,” he said, quick as a flash, stunning the confused postie into silence.

The Queen doesn’t only send cards for 100 birthdays but she also sends them for105 birthdays and every year thereafter and also 60, 65 and 70 wedding anniversaries. She doesn’t personally send them but has staff in the anniversaries office of the Palace to do the job.  A while ago, I saw a job advert for the position. For £21,000 a year, you could be responsible for checking the details and making sure the right people get the right cards on the right day. People have often speculated about whether the Queen will send herself a telegram on her hundredth birthday but she could have sent herself three cards already for her wedding anniversaries. When I was looking for stats on wedding anniversaries I found this blog Why-the-Queen-is-1-in-a-million, which did some maths to come up with the likelihood of reaching your Platinum wedding anniversary as being one in a million.

When my aunt told me what her doctor had said about being one in a hundred and explained that her secret was belonging to the bowling club I thought that they were more like one in a million. Hopefully, they will continue to have a long and happy life and prove the statistics right.