This weekend, Saturday the 20th to be exact, marked Ben and my fifth anniversary of being together. It’s crazy how quickly time passes; it simultaneously feels like just yesterday and forever ago that I moved to Sydney to live with Ben.
We agreed to not buy each other presents this year, in an attempt to make out that it’s no big deal. I asked Ben to let me know if he buys me something anyway so I can reciprocate. Ben has a habit of doing that, so I’ve learned over the years to put in that sort of contingency clause in these types of agreements. To be fair on Ben, I broke our agreement first. I bought him a bowl (I know, how lavish of me), a blue one to match the small red one I bought a few weeks ago that ended up being the perfect size. In retaliation he bought me two dresses. He’s good at buying me dresses, too, so I think I was the ‘winner’ in this situation.
We went on a date on Friday, getting Indian food in Newtown and going to the cinema to watch Looper. It was a simple date night, even though I got a headache halfway through the movie and didn’t have any painkillers with me. Walking home from the station at midnight was so lovely, even with the headache trying to squeeze my eye out of its socket, the temperature was perfect for going for a walk. That is one of the things I absolutely love about summer; in winter once the sun goes down (or sometimes even when it’s still in the sky) I feel like I am going to freeze to death. In summer it may be too hot to move during the day, but the night times are generally much milder and enjoyable. I wonder if I could start a trend of night time picnics; the temperature was perfect for a picnic.
On Saturday we just relaxed for most of the day, doing our own thing, until it was time to go out for dinner. There was an event on in the city where part of a street was closed off and there were Food Trucks showing off how great their food is and all that, so I had been gunning for us to go to that since I heard it on the radio. Once we got there I realised the main problem with this is that the lines for food were ridiculously long and people were pushing and shoving whenever they walked past and it generally wasn’t somewhere I wanted to be. We decided to get sushi instead, at our favourite Japanese restaurant in the city that happened to be just around the corner, and then went on an impromptu pub crawl on our way to catch a train home. It wasn’t an overly big or exciting night, but once again it was nice.
So all in all it was a nice relaxed anniversary. There wasn’t any pressure to make it perfect, or ‘special’, we just spent time together and enjoyed each other’s company. Going to the movies and then a mini pub crawl doesn’t sound like anything super romantic, but it was perfect in that we were relaxed and enjoyed ourselves. There’s wasn’t a big reveal of a fancy present or a proposal (sorry Mum, still no wedding for us) and I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.