How we met

Shortly after we met in 1986, we had a studio portrait taken. Wolf was 31, I was 45. He looks like a very gentle Rasputin doesn't he. As for me, I look a bit of a madam! He always regarded 14 as our lucky number - 14 years' difference in our ages (I could have pushed him out in a pram, had I been that type of girl); 14 stairs to the bedroom; the number of our house - 154 (14 enclosing 5, the sum of its numbers) - and my birthday is 14th June. (8+6 is fourteen too - the year we met).

We walked in the pub and straightaway PF9 noticed Wolfram. We didn't know him then of course, but he pointed him out to me, saying "I'm sure you'd like him. Why don't you go and talk to him?" PF9 was helpful like that. In fact, it was good going around with him, we were both free to do what we liked, but had each other's company.

I looked at where he was pointing. All I saw was a back view - I thought he was a hunchback, as he seemed to have one shoulder higher than the other. As I watched he raised a full pint glass in the air and drank it down in one swallow.  I shuddered. "I've had enough alcoholics in my life, thank you very much," I said to PF9, "I'll pass on this one".

The Father of Nine sang that night, and had a very good time. He said we must come back next week. In fact we came back every week, and every week he pointed at Wolfram and said he was sure I would like him. And I said no thanks. Then one night the music was so loud that it hurt my ears, and I said that if they did not turn it down I would have to leave.

"He's in charge of the music," said PF9, pointing where he had so often pointed before, "go and ask him." Without a moment's hesitation I marched over to the hunchback, and tapped him on the shoulder. He turned round, and I saw the most beautiful face I have ever seen. I fell in love instantly. Never giving another thought to PF9, I chatted to him all night, and went home with him.

Wolf had a store of funny stories, and he had one about our meeting. The thing was, he drank an awful lot and I drank very little. Because of an inability to absorb alcohol, I developed the habit of always going to a pub very late in the evening, to lessen the time spent nursing an empty glass. Wolf of course headed in there at opening time and got tanked up as fast as he could. So in his story, by the time I arrived, and went home with him, he was already so drunk he did not know anything about it.  After the sex, which was wonderful, and totally unaffected by drink, he would fall asleep. I would then get up and walk home with the big red dog.

Next morning at 11 he would fall in the pub door to be greeted with cries of "Hey, you went home with that blonde again last night!"

"Garn, yer havin me on," he would reply. He always claims it was three weeks before he saw me in daylight and realised they were telling the truth!

How we married

October 10th 1987

Look how he loves me, doesn't he! All that hair got cut off in Jan 1988. This was the New Look. He finally realised it had to go when a drunk fell at his feet one night, hailing him as the Lord Jesus and asking to be saved. You can only take so much of that!

It was exactly a year from our first date to the day of our marriage. This is how it happened . . . .

Meeting in the pub was okay, and we also met during the day and went walking with the red dog. I still remember the first walk we had together. We went to the Water Meetings, then decided to take the path to the left of the river. We walked so far then came to a barbed wire fence,

     "We'd better go back", I said, "this is blocked off."

     "You want to go through?" he asked

     "Yes, but we can't"

      He was pulling out the posts with his bare hands. 

     "There," he said happily, "go on now."

Then one night we went out on a real date. He invited me to the Italian Restaurant. As he was locking the door of his house, a shooting star fell. This was the first either of us had seen. It seemed to fall right in the street.  Impressed, I noted the time and later did an astrological chart for it. I had just begun my studies in astrology when we met. Looking at his birth chart was enough to put anybody off. I think you could study astrology for a thousand years, and never know enough to fathom him.

Time went on. Wolf kept asking me to marry him, but I had already been married three times, and had sworn not to marry again unless it was for financial gain. In this case, it definitely wouldn't be! So I held out. My son was courting a girl, and one day he came around to say that they were going to get married, and to tell me the various dates he had in mind. I was pleased of course. Later he came back to say he hadn't been able to get any of the dates he wanted, and that the only one available was the 10th October.  

After he left I puzzled over this date - why did it seem familiar? Then I remembered - the Shooting Star chart!  I went upstairs and got it out, then got down to some synastric calculations - I couldn't believe what I was seeing! Wolf and I were a perfect match! We had the Hermetic Marriage - the Perfect Union between man and woman - his Sun and my Moon in the same degree - 21 Aquarius. And also in this degree was a star called "The Luckiest of the Lucky". We also had sun-moon trines and lots of compatible aspects. Our Venuses were exactly opposite.

Now bear with me, you non-astrologers, while I tell you something about our Venuses. Wolf's chart I have already mentioned as being a suitable study for someone going for a Master's degree in astrology. The reason being, ALL his planets bar one are within the same narrow band of degree number (EXPLANATION - all planets are in one of the 12 signs of the zodiac - each sign has 30 degrees of arc - only signs within the same number range have a relationship with each other - okay so far? some relationships will be good, some bad, depending on the sign position) This means that all his planets aspect all the others (bar one) - so as these planets have simultaneous good and bad relationships with each other, every time something good happens to him, something bad happens at the same time, and vice versa. This can be demonstrated throughout his life. For instance, when he was 16 or 17 he made the finals of the German Karate Championships - good - but his opponent continually gave foul blows and was not picked up by the referee - Wolfram lost his temper and battered the guy - consequence - barred for life - BAD!

Now we come to the 'bar one' - the planet which is odd one out, not in any relationship with any of the others - this is his Venus.  Strange thing was, when I first saw him at that bar, drinking, the overwhelming impression I got was of loneliness. And that is what his Venus is, lonely. Venus=Love of course, so he felt unloved. Venus= Beauty, so he felt unlovely.

Now it happens that my Venus was exactly opposite his Venus. This is a strange relationship between two Venuses, but like two persons with opposite star signs, there is a degree of understanding, which is more of a reaching out to grasp the meaning of the other person's experience. You might say the planets complement each other, each has what the other lacks, so they match.

I have in fact done a study of the relationship between the Venuses of myself and others I have had relationships with (where there was time to collect such things as birth data!) and I made some interesting findings. In one case the Venuses were conjunct (on top of each other) and this relationship was so intense it was pure agony. It was the only relationship where I would have killed myself for despair of love. With PF9 and myself, the Venuses were at 150deg - this could be called the degree of friendship, and we never had a love relationship, but a very solid friendship.  With Wolfram, where Venuses were opposite, there was enough distance between us for us to regard and respect each other as individuals, we had completely separate artistic interests for instance (another of Venus's facets) and for us to meet and share different experiences - and we looked at art and beauty from different standpoints, but were able to communicate what we were feeling and experiencing.

Any road up, as they say in Yorkshire, when I discovered the perfect synastry between us, and the way the Shooting Star chart locked into our birth charts, I raced downstairs and said, "You've got to marry me!" And it had to be on the 10th October, when the chart for the day blended beautifully with all the others. 

There is an additional synastric technique where you can find the midpoint in time and space between two people - I always used to wonder how we would get on with a person born in that place at that time - this would be a person born in October, seven years younger than me, and seven years older than him, at Ypres.  As it happened, such a person did come into our lives, she fulfilled the date criteria, but was not born at Ypres, as far as I know.

Wolf and I were married at 11am at Burnley, then we went to Silsden for Graham and Clare's wedding at 1.30

The Wedding Day

There are only too few photos of the radiant bride, we hadn't arranged a photographer. Luckily one of our friends had the foresight to bring a camera! We kept our marriage a surprise, turning up at Silsden two and a half hours later to attend the marriage of my son Graham and his bride Clare at the Catholic Church in Silsden. Sitting right behind them I felt as though those solemn vows were my own. Though I did feel a bit of a cheapskate muscling in on the wedding reception! I gave the story to the Nelson Leader, suggesting they headline it, "Mother and Son Marry" but they let me down as usual.

We didn't have a honeymoon, but we took a holiday at home, eating in restaurants, going on day trips to the coast, getting out in the country. I didn't want to go back to normal life! Wolf once said to me, much later, that we were always happiest when on holiday, and why didn't we just sell up everything and go roaming the earth. Well by that time I had a computer I couldn't leave, so though I was tempted, | didn't take him seriously.

Graham married Clare Skelly, and they had two sons, Nicholas and Matthew. Wolf and I discussed the possibility of children, although 46 by this time, I was still capable of it. We decided that neither of us would mind if we had a child, in fact we would be delighted, so we left it to nature, with the lucky result that we didn't have to bother with any contraception. In the event, Nature did not bless us with offspring, something I faintly regretted, since what a wonderful mixture that child would have been! On the other hand, we might have argued over its upbringing, and that would have been a pity.

Wolfram does have a child from his first marriage, Jamie, but he has not seen him since he was aged 5.

My wedding present to Clare was to make her wedding dress.