Like all classic love stories, this one also begins in a sweaty night club.
As the DJ span the thumping beat of Five’s Everybody Get Up, the revellers squeezed inside the Crow’s Nest – one of Playa de las Américas less salubrious watering holes – had no idea of the tale being spun by Cupid. It was here that Em and Tom’s romance would ignite.
Back home, the Isle of Wight hosted a more concrete commitment between the two, Cowes Week providing a backdrop to future-plotting to be together in earnest.
The next eight months blurred past, full of moments stolen between journalistic studies and the Newport Safeways check out.
Em must have thought she’d landed on her feet when she was included in the Idle family holiday plans that year, to New York and Boston.
As with all Holiday Romances, theirs was also to be cut short, Tom’s impetuosity getting the better of him. Twenty years later and the telephone-dumping (“I would have done it by text if mobile phones had existed” – Tom) still rankles.
In the intervening years, numerous questionable girlfriends/boyfriends, and failed marriages have been trumped by three glorious offspring.
The pair have also acquired a staggering thirst for fun, for loving and for being loved in return.
As the couple prepare to make honest spouses of each other, ‘1998 and all that’ still echoes loudly.
The love story continues.
