Phyllis and Jack

The Perfect wife by Dr G Courtenay Beale retailed at one and threepence and was published in that once flourishing literary centre, The Charing Cross Road. The fictional Phyllis is given holistic advice on how to be a good wife to Jack, which includes exercising her pelvic muscles, not serving him tinned food, and seeing herself as "his companion, in the fullest sense, not only his housekeeper".Phew. 

Tomorrow TSM and I will have been together 21 years. It's been hard work, laughter and tears, and bloody brilliant. We didn't read the book, we wrote our own, and are writing it still.

Fortunately TSM is no Phyllis and I am no Jack (whose job by the way is to "keep her in comfort, to provide her with such desirable things as his earnings will buy"). And today in particular I would say to her: You are amazing even if one of the few people who doubts it is you. And thank you for these years we have been together. And to both of us I would echo the words of Dr B: ""Above all you can learn from books, use your own powers of shrewd observation and read up in the Book of Life as it is lived all around you". For he and I agree on one thing: your soul mate is also your best friend ...