A first-anniversary tribute to my dear departed Soulmate

‘We met on a blind date, thanks to Guardian Soulmates, on Valentine’s Day in 1998.’ Photograph: mattjeacock/Getty Images

Re Emma Beddington’s article (Twenty years after Mum died, I still don’t know how to mark the day, 22 October), a fitting way for me to mark the first anniversary of the death of my husband, Grahame Nicholls, on 3 November, would be to have a letter of thanks printed in the Guardian.

We met on a blind date, thanks to Guardian Soulmates, on Valentine’s Day in 1998, shortly after his return to his beloved Kent, having spent the previous 25 years as an area officer for the National Union of Public Employees in the north-west.

We married on the same date the following year. The paper had recently asked for news of “blind daters” and we wrote to tell them of our wedding. Two Guardian mugs arrived on the big day – I still use them.
Lesley Nicholls
Ashford, Kent

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