201601
Mavrodaphne & curry
He asked her over and cooked. Her first curry, one Mavrodaphne too many, and she was asleep on his sofa — he never said a word. Ten years on she still drops off halfway through a film, and still insists she is wide awake.
01From a homemade meal
From a homemade meal
in Tom’s kitchen to a table in Attica.
Vasiliki grew up in Aigaleo, Athens. Tom grew up in Spring View, Lower Ince, Wigan. They met in Manchester and fell for each other somewhere between a home-cooked dinner and a very long playlist.
After that it was long meals, good wine, and any excuse for another ticket back to Greece. On 28 May 2027 they are bringing both families together at Sinterina, to do the whole thing properly.
Interlude
How we got
to today.
Ten years, two countries and more flights than they ever counted. Told a year at a time.
2016 — 2027
03
Chapters
Scroll
a decade in six frames
20162027
2016
201702
Manchester nights
Dark bars, bad photos, permanent grins. The beginning of the in-joke that never ended.
201803
Athens, again
That was the year Greece stopped being a trip and became a timetable. By then they were doing Manchester–Athens with their eyes shut: hand luggage only, the same snack every time, and not one flight missed.
201904
First move together
They moved in one floor above the kitchen where it all started. The furniture was late, so they christened the place the best way they knew how: pizza on a mattress standing in for a table, with a view of the boxes.
2020
05
The year of the masks
Nothing was going to cost them a Greek summer. Masks, tests, half-empty terminals — the cases were packed before anyone had finished saying the word restrictions.
2021
06
Just the two of us
The year they got very good at each other's company. A small flat, big plans, and Saturday nights dressed up for nowhere at all — which turned out to beat most nights out.
202207
Exploring the UK
A year of getting in the car and heading north. A yellow rowing boat out on the water, and a bright cold morning walking two alpacas along the shore — proof they will try anything once.
202308
17 Kingshill Road
Keys in hand. Their first house, the first photograph on the doorstep, the first place that was properly theirs.
202409
Snow in Greece
Tom saw snow in Greece for the first time, on Mount Helmos — then got on a snowboard for the first time and came down like he had been doing it for years. Nobody else found this as charming as he did.
202510
The kitchen
Months of dust, the back wall open to the weather, meals eaten standing up wherever there was room. And when the dust settled, there it was: the kitchen they had waited years for.
202611
The ring
The evening they finished the back garden, standing there talking about how proud they were of the home they had built — and Tom asked. One enormous smile, and a very long yes.
202712
Sinterina
28 May, at Sinterina in Anavyssos, about fifty minutes down the coast from Athens. Long tables under the pines, far too much food, toasts in Greek and English, and a party that runs well past midnight. Wear something you can dance in — an early night is not on the cards, and we cannot imagine any of it without you.
