As I mentioned it in an earlier post, I thought today I’d share my favourite date ever. I’m in my 40s and my favourite date ever happened when I was 17. How has it still not been topped?

I was dating a man that would soon go on to become my (now ex) husband. He suggested one day, earlyish in the morning that we visit this large bookstore nearby. Because it was on the other side of the town where I lived and because I relied on public transport, it wasn’t a bookstore I’d visited before. And it was massive. The moment we got there I wandered off in a daze, hypnotised by the rows and rows of books.

My date and I cobbled together this plan where we’d gather up a bunch of books and then find a corner to share them with each other. We both had piles of books with us. Some of them were our favourite books – books we read as children, some of them books we’d read as young people, and we shared what we loved about them. Some of the books were poetry books and we’d choose random poems to read aloud to each other. One of us had found a trivia book. He’d grabbed collections of urban legends and books of folktales from other cultures and he’d read out shorter stories. We found several different books that asked ‘what if?’ questions or other more general getting to know you questions. We were still new in our relationship and in that phase where everything new we learned about each other was precious.

And we spent hours in this corner, talking and laughing. Surrounded by books. Sometimes we’d take turns going for other books, but that was the only break in conversation. There was just so much to say to each other, so much to share. We talked until we were both starved.

Luckily, there was a cafe connected to this bookstore and we ordered ham and cheese croissants and crisps, fizzy drinks. And ate our food pulling apart the croissants into strips, the pastry flaking everywhere. Sharing the bags of crips, our fingers brushing against each other as we tried each other’s drinks and just generally used any excuse to touch each other.

He’d seen that there was a collection of board games that people could play in the cafe. After some debate we settled on Scrabble and I felt gleeful at this very much being my game. But he surprised me with how strategically he was using the double and triple letter and word scores. My vocabulary was better but luck was on his side as he always had just the right letters and just the right number of spaces to maximise his points. When it looked certain he had decimated me he relented and told me he had cheated. That there was no way he could win without it so while I was concentrating so much on my tiles and word choice he had swapped his tiles, had moved letters and words across the board.

And it’s such a testament to my interest in him that I thought this too was adorable. It helped that he said he’d cheated because he wanted to impress me. And he had this mischievous grin and these big brown eyes that I really couldn’t be mad at him. Not for long anyway. We held hands as we left. I don’t remember what we did after that and I don’t remember any of other dates being as wonderful as that one. But decades later I still think of it fondly as one of the best days and dates I’ve had.