Paul and I have been together for over seven years and engaged for about 20 months. We went on a snowboarding holiday with about 15 friends in February 1998. Paul has his own snowboard and is excellent at it. On the other hand, it was my first time and I really wasn’t very good. I had more or less given up and spent most of my time with my friend Karen, who couldn’t snowboard either, due to pregnancy.Anyway, one night (on our monthly anniversary – 65 months to be precise!) after another painful day of attempting to look ‘cool’, I was having a long soak in the tub when Paul, and some of the others returned to the chalet. Paul came into the bathroom and said that he had something for me. My words were, ‘Have you got me some sweeties?’ He then knelt down next to the bath, where I was sitting, all wrinkly from the water, surrounded by foam and with my hair full of shampoo, and, to my absolute astonishment, got a box out of his pocket and showed me a gorgeous ring. I was absolutely gobsmacked and then really strangely, felt embarrassed about being in the bath and tried to cover myself with foam (like he hadn’t seen me naked before – yeah, right!). Apparently, Paul had been planning this for months, been out and bought the ring, brought it on holiday, kept it hidden, not told any of his friends (including his two best mates who were sat in the living room)! The plan had actually been for me to have lessons for the first few days and then on the Thursday (our ‘happy anni’) we would get to the top of a mountain and he would propose to me ‘at the top of the world’. All very sweet, but as Paul pointed out, his plan went to pot when he realised I wouldn’t be going to the top of any mountain, since I was too **** to get back down again! We’re getting married next September and we tell everyone that we got engaged on a mountain in France – which of course is true!
