My feed
Premium

Please
or
to access all these features

Mumsnet has not checked the qualifications of anyone posting here. If you need help urgently or expert advice, please see our domestic violence webguide and/or relationships webguide. Many Mumsnetters experiencing domestic abuse have found this thread helpful: Listen up, everybody

Relationships

Romantic gestures that don't quite work

13 replies

PrettyCandles · 20/08/2010 12:57

Dh took me for a romantic evening walk last night. He planned it out ever so carefully and secretly. He knows that I love water and stargazing, so we were to stroll at sunset through a nature reserve, between lakes on one side and a stream on the other, and return through woodland at night, arriving back at our car in an unlit carpark in time to stargaze for a little while before returning home to the babysitter.

He did not tell me what we were going to do, and in retrospect it sounds lovely.

But.

My MIL has warned me about her son's navigational skills...

For the first hour of the walk the lakes and river turned out to be a massive gravel works and a sewage processing plant!

By the time we got to the nature reserve the sun had set.

By the time we got to the woodland it was so pitch dark that I could see nothing, not even the track beneath my feet.

At least crossing the meadows there was a bit of moonlight, which helped when the dark ponies came up to investigate us.

It was so dark that dh decided we should walk the last mile along the road, rather than through the woods - but we were wearing dark clothes, so that was interesting on the narrow winding country lanes, not to mention the stretch of 50mph A-road!

And it rained.

He tried Grin

OP posts:
Report
Malificence · 20/08/2010 13:02

It could have been worse, the car park could have been the local dogging spot! Grin

A (failed) gesture is better than none.

Report
QueeferSutherland · 20/08/2010 13:03

It sounds, um, memorable.Grin

It was a very sweet thing he did.

Report
PrettyCandles · 20/08/2010 13:03

OMG that never even occured to me! PMSL!

OP posts:
Report
QueeferSutherland · 20/08/2010 13:05

Mal I was going to say exactly that, but thought maybe that was their thing!

FWIW, I have done that. (Accidently parked at dogging spot.)

Report
Malificence · 20/08/2010 13:10

Did they flash (their lights) at you? Shock

Report
SkylineDrifter · 20/08/2010 13:13

You won't forget the romantic gesture anyway. He tried, and it was such a sweet thing to do. Poor guy.

Report
TheMoistWorldOfSeptimusQuench · 20/08/2010 13:19

Aw, your DH sounds lovely

Report
QueeferSutherland · 20/08/2010 14:55

Don't recall, Mal. Was looking gooey-eyed at DH. (D3rdDate at the time.)

My driving instructor parked in the same place and I threw a wobbly.(creepy guy.)

Report
templemaiden · 20/08/2010 16:30

Bless!!

Report
Yika · 20/08/2010 20:05

That's lovely! My DP was all excited about a hidden scenic spot he'd found near where he lived and wanted to take me for a walk there to show me... It turned out to be a walk through an abandoned industrial site ('trespassers will be prosecuted') and up a slag heap. Horrible stench of industrial waste everywhere and we had to scrabble on all fours up a black ashy scree to reach the top. The view that he wanted to show me was a strange moonscape with a lake and bulrushes that had sprung up amid the grime. It was impressive in its way. But it was creepy, dirty and horrible getting there. I was about 4 or 5 months pregnant at the time and more inclined to a gentle walk on a woodland path and I didn't give it the appreciation it no doubt deserved.

Report
PrettyCandles · 20/08/2010 21:39

Oh dear, Yika! My dh had not intended to go via the sewage works - I don't think he even knew of their existence, nor the gravel quarry. They were quite interesting in a way, and certainly moonscapey, just not quite as romantic as he had intended. He kept apologising, but I thought it very funny.

Mind you, he did also think it was a good idea to go camping during a heatwave when I was 6m pregnant with dc3, and so massive I looked (and felt) 9m. Men do have some funny ideas.

OP posts:
Report
Yika · 21/08/2010 21:48

He sounds very quirky and nice :D

Report
FrozenNorth · 22/08/2010 21:36

I left it up to DH to book our honeymoon, which turned out to be lovely and in Prague.

The wedding night, however, I also left to him.

Picture, if you will, bride and groom (still in full wedding regalia) leaving the lovely formal reception in Dulwich and arriving at around midnight at a packed Peckham pub at chucking out time and fighting through crowds to get in (the crowds themselves were fighting, which didn't help anything).

This could have been easily forgiven, I thought, if the B&B room he'd booked was lovely. It was - if your definition of lovely involved all the furniture being screwed down to the floor (the TV was chained to the wall), the mattress being covered in cigarette burns and the whole room being bathed in a sickly yellow glow through the torn curtains. The floor was patchy lino and there was no wardrobe, merely two hooks screwed into the back of the door.

Since DH and I had rather quaintly 'waited til marriage' I spent much of the long-awaited coitus with my eyes closed in case bits of peeling paint and plaster from the ceiling fell in them. We went down to breakfast the next morning and the barmaid almost fell over laughing when we told her it had been our wedding night.

For what it's worth, we saw the funny side and it has gone down in family legend. His explanation for booking the room in the first place? They 'serve a really good pint, and had some nice carved wood and mirrors behind the bar' Confused.

Report
Please create an account

To comment on this thread you need to create a Mumsnet account.