I was working at a Unit in Chelmsford, and the future GLW was depping as a Medical Secretary.

I used to go to the corridor where the MSs worked, usually on work-related business but also to give them a load of old flannel.

I knew she supported Tottenham. After we stuffed them over the Christmas Holidays 2001 I called in to gloat.

Having made it plain she was not interested in me, at all, we later met up on a course I was leading (breakaway techniques for non-clinical staff). We had a grapple on a mat.

The rest, as they say, is history.

4 and a half years ago. Couldn't be happier.

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/did-your-eyes-meet-across-a-crowde...

I first met my partner at a university theatre performance. We didn't actually talk, but she admired me from afar and informed a mutual friend - result!

Well, for waitress read chef and for cocktail bar read pan Asian style restaurant.

Working on an HIV ward and writing up a case study of AIDS-dementia complex. There's romantic.

In a nightclub.

I grinned inanely. She didn't laugh at me.

I summoned the courage to ask if she would like a drink. She said yes.

We had a chat and then went our separate ways.

Couple of months later, same club, we remembered each other (neither of us had been back since) and this time arranged to meet up again (i.e. I was not an idiot and asked this time).

My social skills are so threadbare, I'm staggered that I actually have had any relationships let alone married the very lovely Mrs LB. Its the closest I can get to proof of a supreme being.

We met at work. She worked for someone who worked for me, so when I finally plucked up the courage to ask her out to lunch she said no, on the basis that she didn't want to get involved with anyone at work. She held this position for a few more requests, so I gave up but couldn't stop thinking about her. I confess I abused my position to have totally unnecessary meetings with her about trivia just to see her. Frankly I think she was in on it too... Then a few months later I was down the pub with a few blokes discussing the girls at work (as blokes do) and someone made a lurid comment about her to which I responded "I want to marry her". I don't know who was more shocked, him or me. A few weeks later she came to see my band with a bunch of work people and lingered at the end. I saw my opportunity. I made my move. This time she said yes. We've been together for 18 years now and I adore her now as much as I did then, or possibly more.

Where you drink champagne and it tastes just like cherry-cola

..but this is my first post and I'm not completely sure what I'm doing. What I DO know is that it's 11:45pm, Thursday September the 8th and I'm sitting in a radio station studio in Wellington, New Zealand, about to start a 6 hour shift. I am a passionate reader of The Word and spend a lot of time reading these posts online (a midnight to 6am shift on National Radio is not overly taxing....)

So sorry to interrupt, but you all seem like really nice people and I just wanted to say hello from the colonies.

Cheers!

I only recently heard my parents' story. During a mid-70s bread strike , my mum had some flour and discovered one of her friends had baking yeast. Mum went round to bake a combined batch and met her friend's housemate, aka Dad.

God bless industrial disputes.

One wet February Wednesday evening at a QPR quiz evening. We won third prize (a seat in the executive area for QPR v Cheltenham) but really first prize was her nabbing me.....

pictured on the inside cover of the Rod Stewart LP Smiler. Namely, the Prince Of Wales in Holland Park.

Here's a picture.

The Manor Ground, the old ground of Oxford United.
Lost 4-1.

An Angie Bowie gig at Crocs in Essex.

60% dateline theory out of the water so far.

I wonder where the next generation will meet. Facebook reunited or something.

Online dating.

I hate large crowds, and there isn't a pub scene here, and I work a lot of hours. It worked out. Kind of.

in Montpelier, Bristol, on a blazing hot sunny afternoon when I was too stoned to say much beyond, "Hi there" while grinning in what must have been a friendly fashion.

Some weeks later, again in a pub, this time The Eldon, just off the Jacob's Wells Road, we met again while I was playing pool with my best mate Jez, in the little back room. This time I was relatively sober, and capable of stringing words into sentences.

She was an old school friend of the guy I shared a house with. She rapidly became first my best friend, then my wife, and still is, roughly 30 years later, though we didn't tie the knot for a decade or so after the I'd won the game of pool.

Well no, we met at work, but bonded one evening over tales of our online dating exploits. I was on The Guardian, he was on Match.com, we would never have met.

A long story and several beers later, and we get together at The Village, a gay bar in Soho. We were the only straights in The Village.

I got beaten up in a Brussels nightclub many years ago and ended up living with the girl, who came with me in the ambulance, for four years.. Even in that state the ole' magic was still there.

He liked that I said I read Word, and I had a cool username (Bookworm Airhead).

I read his profile and thought he sounded just like my kind of chap, but he lived too far away. We emailed anyway, then we met, then we spent a lot of time on the A11/A14/M6 back and forth and 10 months after the first email we got married. It'll be 5 years next month...

I fancy the pants off him!