I dislike anniversaries. With the help of my Filofax I can usually manage to honour the bulk of my friends’ birthdays – “Hi Charlotte. Best wishes for your very special day. Gosh doesn’t time fly. Do give me a ring next time you’re down south” – but I am frankly unable to pronounce with any degree of certainty upon the length of my present marriage, the exact number of years since my pacemaker was fitted or the precise date when my beloved Liverpool were last declared champions of Europe.
However, the week before last, when I trooped into Broadcasting House to make another edition of my BBC Radio 4 programme Thinking Allowed, I was energetically confronted by my normally cool producer. Did I know the significance of the episode we were about to make? Not really. Did the year 1998 mean anything to me? Not really. Sorry. Sorry.
My producer gave me a slightly sorrowful smile. “Laurie, this is our anniversary. Our programme has now been broadcast on Radio 4 for exactly 25 years. So many great memories! Remember the social mobility programme?”
How could I forget? I knew immediately she was talking about the day, 20 years ago, when I was interviewing an expert on social mobility and noticed with alarm that he was sliding from his studio chair. In the hope that he might quickly right himself, I pursued my questioning. “Your research indicates an overall decline in social mobility”, I said, “How might you account for that?”
I never got my answer because, with a little whimper, my guest slipped further sideways and then, with a little jerk, fell to the studio floor where he lay motionless amid a tangled mass of studio cables. A frantic producer hissed into my earphones. “Laurie. Laurie. Go to your emails.” Thankfully the guest was fine and in the pub afterwards we laughed ourselves silly over the incident.
But that happy memory epitomises my problem with all such anniversaries: they rarely have a singular dimension. So while it was certainly great fun to remember the day of the disappearing studio guest, I couldn’t relish the incident without also remembering that it occurred at the very time that I was desperately trying to end my unhappy relationship with Sandra, suffering from a rather nasty pubic rash, and had just been told by my dentist that the inside of my mouth resembled a blitzed housing estate.
It’s a paradox perfectly captured by Philip Larkin in his poem “Reference Back”:
“Truly, though our element is time,
We’re not suited to the long perspectives
Open at each instant of our lives.
They link us to our losses...”
There is perhaps one surprising and positive aspect to anniversaries. They can remind us of the road not taken. Nobody captured that benefit with more fervour than my old friend Angela, who, in a tipsy conversation during her 38th wedding anniversary party, confided this insight.
“Laurie”, she said, glancing across the room to her husband. “You know what this anniversary has made me realise? If I had killed Maurice the first time I thought about it, I’d have been out of jail by now.”
No such muddled memories ever interfered with my mother’s wholesale embrace of anniversaries. During my childhood, I was frequently reminded that I had been named due to the proximity of my birthday to the date of the martyrdom of Saint Laurence.
In one respect, Saint Laurence deserved to be honoured. He famously gave all his money away to charity. However, as I later learned, in honouring his anniversary I would also be honouring the date in AD 258 when he was martyred on a red-hot gridiron. As the coals burned into his skin, he had the temerity to give a word of advice to his torturers. “I’m well done on this side. Turn me over”.
For all my horror of anniversaries, I can’t stop thinking that this ancient utterance by my namesake might make a rather fine last set of words – for myself.
This piece is from the New Humanist summer 2023 edition. Subscribe here.
