While in my second year at uni, I began going out with a girl I’ll call Andrea, and in our mutual third year we moved in together to a double room in a shared house. I don’t think either set of parents was that thrilled by the move, but we were growing up and asserting our independence. We got very close and secretly became engaged.
In the 1980s, when many of the uni girls had strange haircuts, avant-garde make up and multiple piercings, Andrea was something of an exception. She was quite a plain, homely girl with her brown hair in a practical bob, and she almost never wore any make-up. There was kind of a ‘purity’ about her which I really liked. They say men generally marry their mum, and that particular shot would certainly hit home in my case.