TO.P: It’s Noticeable In The Pictures You’ve Kindly Shared With Us That There’s A Twinkle In Both Your Eyes, So Wonderfully It Seems It’s Not Just About You Being Married To Each Other For A Long Time, You Actually Still Like Being Together. Is That Right?
JT: Yeah We Do. Not All The Time [Laughs]. Most of The Time. We Like Our Own Space As Well. And I Think That’s The Thing. Don’t Be On Top of Each Other Too Much. We’re Not Stuck Together Like Glue. You Have To Have Your Own Hobbies And Be Able To Not Be In Each Other’s Pockets All The Time, But When You Are Together It’s Times When You Want To Be Together.
DT: I Don’t Know About The Twinkle But It’s Being With The Person You Want To Be With And From When I Met My Wife, Before We Were Married It Looked Like Fate Was Always Going To Join Us Together. It Was Meant To Be. Fate Just Drew Us, Built Us And Kept Us Together. And As I Said Before, It’s Working At It. The Secret Is There Is No Secret. You Know, It’s Just Hard Work. But It’s Not Hard Work. Because It’s Work That You Like. And Without Knowing It, You’re Just Doing It.
TO.P: How Do You Make A Friendship Within A Marriage. Compared For Instance To When You See Some People Who Are Married When You See Them They Don’t Seem To Talk To Each, They Don’t Seem To Be Happy Together, There’s No Twinkle?
JT: Well It Was Obviously There In The Beginning You Have To Work At It And You Have To Want To Be In The Relationship. I Mean We Are Not Friends All The Time. There’s Times When We Have Arguments And You Don’t Want To Speak To Each Other, But That Doesn’t Last Long, You Know. Especially On My Part Because I’m The Type That Will Just Argue And Finish. Des Might Drag It Out A Bit Longer Because He’s The Silent, Quiet, Broody Type.
But The Friendship Is Very Important Because We Are Good Friends. When You’ve Been Together So Many Years You Just Kind of Know The Other Person, And You Really Understand, Even When They’re Not Saying Anything, What They’re Feeling And You Try To Mend If Something Has Gone Wrong. You Try To Bridge That Gap Because You Don’t Want To Not Be On Speaking Terms, It’s Upsetting. And It’s Because You Love That Person And You Value That Person That You Will Try And Mend Whatever Bridge Appears To Be Broken For That Section of Time. You’ve Got To Be Patient.
DT: Well Your Wife Has Got To Be Your Best Friend. If There’s No Friendship And There’s No Likeness And There’s No Companionship And If There’s No Love, All Those Things They’re In The Cake. And We Have This Cake That We’re Not Just Trying To Put A Little Everyday Ordinary Ingredients In, We Put In Our Special Brand And The Cake Is What We Have A Piece of Everyday. This Is Our Cake. Our Love For Each Other. It’s A Special Friendship. She Is My Best Friend.
TO.P: So You Mentioned Arguments Earlier. It’s Been Said By Some Long Term Married Couples That They Never Go To Sleep On An Argument, But Sometimes Surely You Must Because You Can’t Always Resolve Things Over Night. How Do You Handle Arguments?
JT: The Thing Is We Are Kind of Similar Personalities. But He Knows I’m Quite Volatile. So I’ll Be The One That Flairs Ups Quickly. Shouty. Stressy. And He Can Be Calm.
It’s Impossible Not To Go To Bed On An Argument But You Try Not To Hold Onto It Too Long. And All Our Arguments Have Never Been About Anything Serious. I Can Honestly Say In 48 Years We Argue Over The Most Stupidiest Things. So It’s Easy Afterwards To Just Mend It. There’s Never Really Been Any Big Issue That We Actually Argued About. It’s Silly Things.
DT: Sometimes You Have To Say It’s Hurting Me More Than It’s Hurting Her. Sometimes Your Stubbornness And Your Silliness Carries It Over Too Long. And Then You Say I Want This To End.
TO.P: What’s The Longest An Argument’s Lasted?
DT: A Couple of Days. And Even Then That’s A Long Time. You Can’t Be Living In The Same House And Carry Thing On Because It’s Hard You Know. This Is Your Friend. Your Best Friend. Your Wife. Your Partner. When She’s Not Here I Miss Here. When I’m Not Here She’s The Same. So! Maybe It Might Be Horrible To Say But It’s Good To Have An Argument Sometimes As You Get Things Out The Air. You Get It Out Off Your Chest.
JT: We Don’t Hold Back. We Just Tell It Like It Is.
DT: And After That It Becomes Good. And The Good Part Is Making Up. You Know. Because You See The Other Person’s Point of View. And Sometimes You Might Not See The Other Person’s Point of View. But It’s Good Just To Get Back To Normal.
TO.P: Do You Believe In Romance?
JT: On Valentine’s Day We Went Out For A Little Drive And We Went Out For A Little Lunch But We Didn’t Make A Big Deal of It. But It Was Really Des Who Instigated That, So He Was Being The Romantic One. Another Year Maybe I Would Be The Romantic One And Do Something. He Acknowledged That It Was Valentine’s. We Didn’t Go Crazy. Sometimes We’ve Gone Out For A Meal. Other Times We’ve Not Done Anything, We’ve Just Bought Each Other A Card. It’s Not Just About One Day Is It? It’s Your Life. So You Have To Acknowledge Each Other And That You Do Love That Person And Show It In A Way.
But In Your Day To Day Life You’re Not Always Showing It. You’re Just Carrying On. Especially When You’re Raising A Family. It’s Easier Now Because Mostly It’s Just The Two of Us. But When We Were Raising The Kids, He Was Busy Working, I Was Busy With The Kids, So You’ve Got To Find That Time To Be Together. It Was Harder Then.
TO.P: What’s The Most Romantic Thing You’ve Ever Done?
JT: For His Birthday…I Did Organise His 70th Birthday. I Wouldn’t Say That Was Romantic Because We Had Loads of Friends Invited. But He’s Organised Surprise Birthday Parties For Me. My 25th. My 40th. And My 50th . Which I Knew Nothing About. And For His 70th Two Weeks After His Birthday I Organised A Big Party For Him. For Our Anniversary We Went To A Hotel In Kensington For A Long Weekend. The Year We First Married I Did A Dinner For Him. Tried To Do A Romantic Dinner For Him But His Sister Turned Up On The Day, So It Kinda Got A Bit Spoilt That One.
DT: I Think You Have To. I Believe In The Magic of Life. Being Romantic Is Magic. You’ve Got To Believe In The Romance Side of A Partnership. It’s Like Believing In Father Christmas. I Believe There’s Magic In Everything. There’s Magic In Two People Being Together. And Also You Don’t Even Think of The Time You’ve Been Together But It Seems Like Just Yesterday.
I Can’t Believe My Oldest Son Is Going To Be 45. Those Years It’s Like How Did It Happen That We’ve Been Together So Long. It’s Just Fun. You Know. We’ve Had Fun. And It’s The Fun Side of The Romance. And The Hard Side Is The Working Side. The Fun Side Is Us Being Able To Have A Laugh.
JT: And We Do. We Do Have A Laugh. On Monday Coming (20th February) Will Be The Day I First Met My Husband. I’m Meeting My Friend Who We Met At Their Wedding When I Was 14.
TO.P: And Are They Still Married?
JT & DT: [Simultaneously] Yes!
TO.P: How Did You Come To Know That Person To Go To Their Wedding In The First Place?
JT: My Dad And The Groom’s Dad Were Friends. And Des And The Groom Were Friends. Des Was The Best Man At That Wedding.
[Although They Met At This Wedding They Went Their Separate Ways Afterwards And It Was Another Four Years Before They Began To Date. But They Made up For Lost Time Though Because They Married Just Over A Year Later. Des Was 27 & Jeanette She Was 20. Des Proposed In February 1975 (On Their 3rd Time of Meeting…And Whilst Driving!). Demonstrating Amazing Forward Planning They Bought Their First House In April 1975 But Did Not Move In Together Until They Were Married In October 1975. It Just Goes To Show That Ultimately It’s All About The Marriage Not The Proposal, The Wedding Nor The Wedding Day Primarily. We’re Loving That!]
DT: 25th Surprise. 40th Surprise. 50th Surprise. It’s The Little Things That Are Big Things. Romance Is Not Just A Word, It’s An Action. And It Speaks Volumes If You’re In It And Doing It, But You Can’t Think About It. You Gotta’ Do It. You Can’t Think And Read About It And Not Have It. You’ve Got To Have It In Your Life.
It’s Like You Love Your Kids. You Love Your Wife. It’s That Mixture Again. I Go Back To The Cake And The Thing of Mixing It All Up. What Is It That We Enjoy? Do We Enjoy Love? Do We Enjoy Ice-Cream? You Enjoy It.
Every Day Is A Valentine. Every Day. It’s Good. If You Can’t Celebrate Your Life With Somebody There’s No Point Is There? I Didn’t Buy A Valentine’s Card This Year. But We Went Out For A Meal. We Went Out For A Drive. Instead Trying To Speak It, Do It. Just Do It.
JT: I’ve Written Poems For Him Over The Years.
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