A right royal romantic repost today. I love telling this story: how Phil made his intentions known.
Oh, Mr Darcy.
He’s not quite my type, this hero of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, but somehow one doesn’t have to long for him, to empathise with his dark, brooding, taciturn admiration of the brightest of the Bennet sisters.
Darcy had one rather abortive attempt at asking Elizabeth Bennet to marry him, during which she gave him short shrift.
He knew he loved her, but he did not help himself into her good books. The moment he stepped into her social circle he was rubbing people up the wrong way and stepping on all the wrong toes.
I love Austen’s description of Darcy at the final happy-ending moment of realisation as ‘violently in love’. There is nothing tempered about his regard for Elizabeth Bennett. If you and I knew them personally I suspect we would be cheering without decorum.
There is a prince who seemed, a little sadly, to doubt the violence of his love.
I have to ask whether Britain’s Prince Charles had that intensity of emotion which dogged Mr Darcy to declare himself a second time.
It was during Diana’s biography, written by Andrew Morton, that she tells how he took her to the nursery at Windsor Castle to propose.
When he asked her, she says she thought he was joking, and agreed in the same playful spirit.
But he was serious. And when she agreed to marry him, she told him she loved him, her biography relates.
He answered with that phrase, one which rang false even on the day they first faced the cameras together: “Whatever love means….”
Poor man. Poor girl. Wrapped up in ceremony and pomp and circumstance and unable to see, any more, what it means to be violently in love.
When I was a reporter I used to float around in my own world. My head was constantly in the clouds and I never picked up social nuances and politics.
My office was like a living soap opera. There was the young highly intelligent loudmouth whose one ambition was to get to The Sun, our lowbrow but well written British comic-for-the-masses. He has been there these 20 years and risen to great heights.
There was the long-suffering editor who never made a deadline any more terrifying than it really had to be.
Two grounded deputies, each in their own way: and a motley crew of journos, just starting in the profession, learning how to get a story and make it behave.
I sat on the same desk as Phil, whom I ignored for some considerable time, not because he was not an attractive proposition, but because I could never imagine how someone like me could end up with someone as odd, and glamorous and clever as he was.
It was a typical Darcy regard/ Elizabeth oblivious scenario. We simply never dared investigate.
Our offices were in a humble, provincial town centre just down the road from Sainsbury’s.
Every morning, someone would send a list round to find out who was peckish and what they would like from the supermarket.
And generally, because I marched then, and always will march, on my stomach, the list compiler was me. I’d send a dog-eared piece of copy paper round, and I can still remember some of the orders.
My editor loved potato and frankfurter salad. Even when I make that today, I think of him.
My deputy would generally order a diet drink. Fast-reporter always liked crisps. And so on and so on.
One day I sent round the list, and just to be sure I read it out loud so people could check their orders.
A pot of pot and frank sal.
Diet coke.
A packet of crisps.
Half a pound of love and a packet of desire.
It wasn’t until I had read it out loud with my usual thoughtless flourish that the analytical part of my brain kicked in, and I thought, Pardon?
Phil, knowing I would be the sole reader of the list, had made his intentions clear. And then I had loud-hailed them to our small but seething community.
I paid for that piece of tactlessness. A predatory female journo made her move with alacrity, and it took months to extricate the man I wanted to investigate from her (engaged to somebody else) talons.
I dashed up north to two close friends, both girl journalists, and presented them with the list. I asked, seriously and with earnest puzzlement, did it mean I had a chance with Phil?
Half an hour later, they had begun to stop laughing, just enough to tell me to investigate further.
Which I did: and here I sit, listening to him hob-nobbing with the children upstairs.
Auspicious, colourful beginnings: they don’t guarantee happy endings.
But it does help if you know whatever love is.
Kate Shrewsday 
What a great story – haha – and a happy ending 🙂 Here’s to true love and dark, mysterious brooding men.
They make the world go round, Gabrielle 🙂
Awww, that is such a lovely story. A man with a sense of how to get noticed, a woman who makes mistakes, the perfect princess, because she will accept his imperfections as fitting with her own.
I might just print that comment out and stick it on my fridge, Sidey. The perfect summary 🙂
You are welcome 😉
I loved it… 🙂
Glad to hear it, Jas 🙂
best start to a day I have had in a long time:) heard an expression in Australia ‘you wouldn’t read about it!’ for far fetched anythings – your story would have people rolling their eyes saying it wouldn’t happen – so pleased it did – so glad you got your man and he hobnobs with the children :):)
ps and I’m not even a romantic!
Alberta, thanks so much for commenting today 🙂 Far fetched stories are our stock in trade here in this household, I have manymanymany more where that came from….this is the man who put an inflatable gorilla on our stairs to fend off burglars, whose latest Christmas experiment was to make and boil a Victorian Christmas Pudding in a garden chimenea (it came out smoked): who tells the children he is Superman because he can see through windows and walk through doorways. He’s a one off…
I’ve come over all emotional here… 🙂
😀 It’s a good yarn, Fiona: Phil’s full of them.
So glad you reposted this. So romantic, with a touch of whimsy and folly, the insertion of the evil witch, and the princess emerging triumphant. Love it when love triumphs!
It’s a modern fairy tale, Col ;-D
Love this Kate – it is no wonder you are such a lovely family – all of the intentions were there on both sides, just waiting to be connected.
They were, Rosemary 🙂
What a very cool story, Phil is my hero in the Romance Department.
It was original, wasn’t it, Lou? Had me hooked, anyway…
Oh Kate, what a love story! Beats Austen, and I say that as an Austen lover.
Wow, Tilly, hold on while I emblazon those words across my forehead in a nice tattoo.
True love will always find a way…….
Usually, Myfanwy – thank goodness!
“Lovely” story!
yaakov….
Chocca block full of romance, Yaakov 🙂
And they are living happily-ever-after. What a sweet treat with my morning coffee.
Even sweeter in the living, Karen 🙂
I just had heart palpitations upon opening this post. I read it on my iPhone early this morning, but I cannot see the pictures there. I could watch Colin Firth in that series for days and days and days and not tire of him. (MTM puts up with this, as the acting in ‘A Single Man’ convinced him that Mr. Firth is more than just a dark-and-handsome face.)
*Sigh.*
I loved this glimpse into how Phil started wooing you the first time I heard it. It is a gift to find men who know what they want when they see it, and who pursue that end with purpose and creativity.
And you should know, Andra: MTM is the perfect example 🙂
Many of my countrywoman have a similar passion for Mr Darcy in that lovely white shirt. Me, I’m a Mr Rochester kinda gal. Be still my beating heart….. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=shN9dtY4kVA
Lucky it was Sainsbury’s and not Morrison’s Kate – who knows what the fates would have decided. Loved it! Just watched the budget and needed cheering up!
Good. The budget is extremely grim. I have been walking up and down an cursing.
Agreed – so have I!
What a great start to happily ever after 🙂
🙂 Thanks, Tandy: it was!
Such a storied start of whatever love is, Kate, brought about with your way with words here again for us.
I cringe every time I see that clip of Charles and Diana and reach for a heavy tome, wishing I could whop that prince of a head with it.
My best friend and Tom’s best friend tried to set us up for nearly a year before it finally happened. That was 43 years ago. Sigh.
That is such a sweet way of telling you he’s interested – slightly embarassing when you read it aloud to the office at large, but it makes for a great story 🙂
Yup. Red faces all round at the office, Lexy 😀
So sweet, Kate – I’m glad you reposted this, hadn’t seen it before. And yours reads like the real ‘fairy-tale romance’ (not PC & D’s, which was a sham from the beginning…)
This was indeed the real thing, Ruth 🙂
Oh, swoon.
Well, quite 🙂
lovely lovely lovely
🙂 It was….
delicious story.
…..and we have the shopping list to prove it 🙂
ahhhh!
Aww great story, thanks for sharing that! I loved reading about how you guys met and got together.
Hi Brittany! Hope that book of yours is going to plan! Lovely to hear from you!
Oh, my! Did Phil blush red as a beet (root) when he realized you planned to read his declaration out loud to all assembled?
No matter . . . all’s well that ends well, eh?
(Glad you unhooked those talons from YOUR catch).
I believe Phil was a little discomfited, yes, Nancy.
Thos talons took a mighty deal of unhooking, I can tell you…
Wow – the kind of scene that, if it were in a film, would make me hide my face in my hands and wonder how the couple would ever get past such a move. (But I would be confident that they would figure it out.)
True love conquers all, Patti 😀
Dear Kate, . . . and therein lies a novel. Peace.
Indeed it does, Dee 🙂 Maybe one day I’ll find the time to write it…
shall see this in pictures, someday, I’m certain…you and Nora Ephron’s sequel: When Kate met Phil ~
😀 A quirky British comedy. I like it, Angela…
I am so glad you shared this, Kate! What a wonderful story to tell the children about how their parents met and fell in love! I didn’t have any idea that the two of you had worked together and that is a nice piece for me to fill in as I follow the lives of the Shrewsday family. I wonder how Phil reacted (internally more than externally) to hear his food order read out loud! I love reading about your personal life, Kate. This was charming! Debra
I believe Phil went a deep shade of red, Debra 🙂
Finding that Right person can be so hard – how often do our assumptions get in the way? Good post 🙂
Thanks Martin: you’re right. Sometimes we make up our mind before we’re begun…
Wonderful, Kate, and I’m so glad it carried through! Many an office romance (and I should know) fades and dies in the early days…
Well done for winning the day and outwitting the predator, Kate!
Aw, so sweet. Then for some reason that infamous ‘twue love’ came to mind, I do apologise. 🙂