Sick as dogs

I'm lucky to have been hit by food poisoning very few times in my life. I can remember three instances very vividly. No doubt there were some other occasions but they escape my memory.

An old girlfriend Patricia and I were living in a shared flat with a bunch of other people. One night someone volunteered to cook a meal for everyone. Soon after the meal both Patricia and I were violently ill. Clearly the cook had not been sufficiently hygienic. We just shrugged it off as a typical shared-flat situation.

Another time Jenny and I were at a friend's wedding, and we gorged ourselves at the wedding reception afterwards. When we got home later we were both sick as dogs. Of course we didn't tell our friend about the food poisoning, she would have felt very guilty and it would have spoilt the day for her. I imagine some of the other guests must have had food poisoning as well, but when we saw the friend later she never mentioned it.

Then I got food poisoning on a flight to Australia. By a weird coincidence, the woman sitting next to me also had food poisoning, so we were able to deduce the cause - the egg sandwiches we had at Costa Heathrow. Boy, was I glad when that flight was over!

I love peanut butter and eat loads of it, but I read that peanut butter can easily be contaminated by salmonella, either during the growing period or during later processing. There are regular recalls of peanut butter in the States. Well, I've never heard of a peanut butter recall in the UK, so I guess it's safe for me to go on eating the stuff.

Over the top

It seems that elaborate weddings aren't going out of favour but are more popular than ever, and many attendees are complaining about how much money they're expected to fork out.

There are often complaints that they're expected to spend way more than they spent on their own wedding, especially if the wedding takes place not locally but in some distant location, requiring flights and hotels.

Expenses can include the wedding gift, maybe a bridesmaid dress, bridal shower gift, and hair and make-up.

"Why are we normalising this behaviour?" said one bridesmaid. "I'm so happy to celebrate my friend's special day, but it's getting out of hand. What happened to just getting together a few days before the wedding to celebrate?"

As most of you will know, Jenny and I had the exact opposite of a grand wedding. We married in the local registry office with just two witnesses, and then the four of us went out for a celebratory meal. We would never have expected our friends to lash out huge sums to attend an over-the-top wedding.

I would have thought that with the escalating cost of living, people would spend as little as they could on their wedding and save as much cash as possible for future expenses like buying a house. But no, they want to get hitched in style.

And do those fancy weddings work or do they end in tears? In a survey of 4,000 married couples, more than 50% said they'd felt regret at some point in their marriage. They thought they'd married the wrong person, or the love was never mutual, or their partner's personality changed.

Personally I've never had any regrets. Luckily Jenny and I clicked right from the start.

Promises promises

Do people take their wedding vows seriously? Do they honestly intend to stay with their spouse through thick and thin, through hell and high water, through the grimmest of circumstances? Or do they make that promise a bit tongue-in-cheek, not really meaning it? Like you agree to the terms and conditions on an insurance policy, without actually reading them?

I don't recall what wedding vows Jenny and I used. I don't remember us writing our own vows, so I think we must have used the traditional ones, which go something like this:

"I, whoever, take thee, whoever, to be my wedded husband/wife, to have and to hold, from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death do us part."

But since around 40 per cent of marriages end in divorce, clearly in practice everyone has their particular limits, and what one person will happily tolerate will drive another to pack their bags.

Whatever their wedding vows, people may be unable to cope with their partner getting a nasty illness, becoming an alcoholic, being work-obsessed, being a total slob, joining some weird cult, or sleeping around. And you wouldn't expect anyone to put up with ongoing violence or cruelty or gaslighting.

I doubt many spouses really believe they should tolerate absolutely anything, however distressing or humiliating. I suppose the wedding vows are still very much a puritanical hangover from the days when wives were expected to endure whatever their husbands inflicted on them.

Jenny and I have never had our pledge of loyalty put to a serious test - certainly none of the things I just mentioned. How would we cope if one of us got a dreadful illness, or turned into a pugnacious bully? Hard to say unless it actually happened.

Only a saint could adhere faithfully to the wedding vows. And not many of us are saints.

Tying the knot

I'm surprised marriage is still so popular, when cohabiting is now seen as perfectly normal - unlike in my younger days when it was still frowned upon. In fact my own father so disapproved of me and Jenny cohabiting in the 1980s that he left me nothing whatever in his will.

In 2015 the number of marriages in England and Wales had fallen by 40 per cent from 1947, the year I was born. But there were still 239,000 marriages, many of them elaborate affairs with exotic locations, lavish catering and all the trimmings.

Clearly marriage is still very meaningful to a lot of people. For me it's just some solemn promises in a suitably solemn venue, but for others it's a lot more. It marks a major turning point in their life, a huge transition and a huge commitment to another person.

Jenny and I cohabited for 14 years, and intended to carry on that way. We knew we loved each other and we didn't need a piece of paper to confirm it. But as I've explained before, we faced a minor crisis when Jenny's employer said that if she died her occupational pension could only go to a spouse and not to a cohabiting partner or significant other. So we bit the bullet and got married. What you might call a bit of creative accounting.

I think many people still believe that cohabiting amounts to something called common-law marriage, which gives you the same legal rights as those who are married. In fact cohabiting couples have no legal protections whatever, which may be one reason marriage is still popular.

I suspect it's also the celebrity effect. People see celebrities having extravagant weddings and want to do the same. Quiet devotion isn't enough. They want their day of glitter and glamour to prove they're serious. And can still look stunning in a wedding dress*.

*and that's just the men....

A splurge to remember

I'm constantly amazed at how much some people spend on weddings, and what they could have done with all that money instead of splurging it on a single day of celebration.

I see the average cost of a wedding is now £27,000, which includes £4,354 for venue hire, £3,630 for the honeymoon, and £3,353 for the food. I guess it also includes a special car to arrive in, a photographer, the wedding dress, wedding favours and umpteen tips for the service providers. That's a staggering amount to mark the fact that you love someone.

I'm not criticising those who choose to splash out so much on their "big day". It's their choice and nothing to do with me. If they want a super-ceremony they'll always enjoy looking back on, why not?

But personally I can think of much better uses for £27,000. Like building up a deposit to buy a home. Or several luxury holidays. Or updating the kitchen. Or buying a new car. Or regular visits to a favourite restaurant.

When Jenny and I finally married, after cohabiting for many years - because her occupational pension would only go to her spouse if she died - we didn't want an elaborate ceremony. We had a hefty mortgage at the time, and money was short. And anyway, we knew we loved each other and wanted to stay together, and we didn't see the need for a lot of fancy razzamatazz to prove it.

So we had a very simple ceremony, with two old friends as witnesses, and then took them for a slap-up meal at - yes - our favourite local restaurant. Total cost of the wedding was the marriage fee, whatever that was, plus the restaurant bill of around £80 at today's prices. Not exactly ruinous!

A good job we didn't have confetti. That would have been another fiver....

Not much fun

A study of men who go on stag dos concluded that most of them don't enjoy it and would rather not have taken part. At various times they felt embarr-assed, humiliated, shamed and scared, and only joined in because they felt it was expected it of them.

A groom-to-be was pressured into going to a lap-dancing club and hated every minute of it. One man was subjected to sustained ritual humiliation, given so much to drink he passed out and wet himself, and then tied up with cling-film. And so on.

Thankfully I've never been on a stag do in my life. I've been to very few weddings, but in each case the groom-to-be loathed stag nights and I was never invited to one. The whole idea of relentless debauchery and drunkenness fills me with horror. I can't see the attraction, and I can't see how a hung-over and shattered groom could possibly enjoy his wedding.

People in other countries are reportedly baffled by the frantic over-indulgence of British stag dos, and the mayhem they cause in local communities. They just wish those involved would go back home on the earliest flight.

Perhaps those men who know they won't enjoy themselves should be honest enough to say so and opt out. If that means they're seen as wimps and milksops, so be it.  Better than being ritually humiliated by so-called "friends".

This lingering male tradition of ritual humiliation is pretty sick. Why do some men feel the need to torment other men by getting them to drink too much or harass women or do something disgusting or dangerous? What's wrong with a simple supportive friendship? What's wrong with being nice to each other?

The sooner stag nights go out of fashion, the better.

Not quite married

Even though Jenny and I have been married for 15 years, we don't think of ourselves as married. We're still much more comfortable with the idea that we're cohabitees.

To me at any rate, the term marriage still implies all sorts of ugly expectations about roles and behaviour and duties which I don't go along with. The husband as breadwinner, the wife as housekeeper, obedience, submission, sex with the lights off, suburban sterility, you name it.

I know very well that all those stereotypes are out-of-date, and in theory marriages can be whatever you want them to be, but nevertheless just the thought of marriage gets all those preconceptions bubbling up and makes me feel instantly limited and put-upon.

Cohabitee on the other hand means nothing at all except living together. It doesn't imply anything about how you should behave, your lifestyle, the sort of home you live in, your domestic status. All it means is that you've chosen to live together, for whatever reason, because it's convenient or appealing.

It's entirely up to you how you live together. You're free to negotiate every little detail, from housework to sex, from organising to communicating, without any prior assumptions about what's traditional or appropriate. You can do whatever feels right for you, whatever comes naturally.

So whenever either of us accidentally mentions being married, or being a husband or wife, the other shudders and screeches and generally has conniptions. It's in bad taste, it's like farting at a dinner party or swearing in front of the vicar. It poisons the happy home.

The bit of paper's useful of course, financially and legally. But all the cultural baggage that goes with it - thanks but no thanks.

Passion killer

It must be quite a shock for a woman who jumps into bed with her boyfriend, looking forward to a night of pleasure and passion, only to find she has an unexpected problem - she's allergic to sperm*.

Apparently up to 10,000 British women have the allergy. Any contact with the stuff and their body rebels - itching, stinging, swelling, blistering, hives and breathing difficulties are the possible effects. Not quite what they had in mind.

Julie Boyde of Ambridge, Pennsylvania, only discovered the problem on her wedding night. Previously she and husband Mike had used condoms so she was unaware there was anything wrong. Then suddenly the pleasure disappeared.

Doctors tried to cure the allergy with a special serum but it made no difference. As the couple want to have children, and she objects to IVF, now the only thing they can do is adopt. A big disappointment for both of them, I'm sure.

It must rather spoil your sex life if you have to tell every new boyfriend that you're ahem, allergic to you-know-what. Guys who're proud of their masculine virility must find it a bit of a let-down that certain options are strictly out of bounds and tamer substitutes are required.

I wonder if some guys can't quite believe what they're hearing and think it's just another female excuse like having a headache or time-of-the-month. Or if they even find it insulting - "What do you mean I'll bring you out in a rash? Nobody else has ever complained...."

It must be a tricky situation to handle. I suppose the best course is to find a man who understands and then stick with him. Or become a lesbian....

* The medical term is Seminal Plasma Hypersensitivity

Marriage vows

Jenny and I didn't intend to get married. We had been happily living together for 14 years and didn't see any point in doing the paperwork as we knew we were firmly committed to each other.

Then one day J was told that if she died her local authority pension could only go to her husband. Cohabitees of whatever vintage counted for nothing and wouldn't get a penny. We chewed this over for a while and wondered whether we should swallow our scruples and go legal or leave our future finances to chance.

We decided to get married strictly as a piece of creative accounting, with the simplest ceremony possible. No way was it going to escalate into a mortgage-size white wedding with all the trimmings, 200 guests, a five-course banquet and a fleet of limousines. We would just have felt consumed by something out of our control, like Jonah being swallowed by the whale.

Managing to keep our parents well out of it, we arranged a 10-minute hook-up at the local register office, with a couple of good friends to witness the magical moment when we gazed into each other's eyes and agreed to share our pension entitlements. Oh, and our passionate devotion.

Then, what better way to build up our strength for the nocturnal obligations of marriage than some sumptuous aphrodisiacs at our favourite eaterie, washed down by the best aphrodisiac of all, a few generous glasses of champagne. All in all, a very enjoyable and stress-free marriage which did the business without us feeling railroaded into some stifling extravaganza.

I know lots of people (like Flirty) will think I'm a hopeless spoilsport and party-pooper, pouring cold water on what for many couples is obviously an occasion for the biggest and most uninhibited celebration they can muster.

Well, if that's what works for them, I sincerely wish them every happiness, but personally I can't see how a £25,000 bash would have made our nuptial vows any more serious than a solemn promise in front of two valued friends. Different strokes for different folks, as they say.