Vintage

1989 probably wasn’t a particularly good year if you were a student protesting in Tiananmen Square, or the bloke in charge of guarding the Berlin Wall.  Salman Rushdie probably wouldn’t place it in his top ten, marking as it did several years of living dangerously (and with a fatwa hanging over his head). Nor would a handful of Eastern Bloc rulers who saw power slip through their fingers.

But for me, in my own little non-world-events scope of things, it was the start of something big.

It was the year that I travelled to Greece to work a summer as a tour company rep for British holidaymakers on the island of Samos. The year that I made friends with the cheeky barman in the hotel where some of my guests were staying, the one with twinkle in his brown topaz-tinted eyes and just the right idea for where to hang my noticeboard. 

And 25 years to the day today, we crossed the line between friendship and something more.

Despite my dodgy perm and my even dodgier rep’s uniform. 

Despite the seriously garish  Hawaian shirts and dubious braces he wore. 
Despite the fact that three days after our first proper date he turned up drunk as a skunk on my doorstep at 3am, having been challenged to sample everything in the bar by a guest (yep, a Brit!). 

Despite the fact that we smoked too much, didn’t sleep enough and ended up turning our lives inside out to face a direction neither of us ever expected. 
Despite everything, for me and the Mr 1989 was a very good year.