Married to The Techie

Or... don't you just love him? Part One - Our anniversary, by Lucy F...

Today is our Wedding Anniversary – but as the woman who is married to The Techie (the capitals are intentional, btw), I'm not holding out much hope in the 'romantic gestures' department as I realise that this year I haven't followed my 3,3,3 rule. Remind him 3 weeks in advance; remind him 3 days in advance and then drop it into the conversation at least 3 times the day before.

Having said that, the baby's asleep...

When he bounds into the room, he has one hand behind his back and one thing on his mind. 'Darling!' he says, all breathless like; 'I've got something really special that I want to share with you,' and I think, 'hello: things are looking up...'

But no, things are not looking up. There's no champagne and orange juice, no chocolates. Not even a bacon butty. Instead, from behind his back, he reveals... a sheet of A4 with a fuzzy square pattern on it.

(I bet you can feel my disappointment).

'Darling' he says again, 'I've got you some roses.' (I look at him and think, 'not unless you're Dynamo, you haven't', but I say nothing). 'Yesterday', he says, 'I was walking past that new florist and I saw a beautiful bouquet of red roses and I thought of you. So I took a picture of them!'

'You did what?'

'I took a picture of them. Outside the florist!' (He looks at me with a puzzled expression, as if to say, 'how dim are you?') 'For free', he adds, as if that makes it OK to take pictures of flowers instead of actually buying them for your wife on our anniversary. 'Then, I tweeted the photo and on my lap-top, I found the tweet and clicked on 'view summary', which took me to the image of the roses and its url! And then, I copied the url, put 'QR Code' into Google, took my pick of the code readers on offer, (they're all free, by the way) and pasted my url into the generator! It was so simple!

Still with me? At which point, he hands me the page of A4 with the fuzzy square. 'Take a look' he shouts with excitement.

'And I am meant to do what with this?'

'Scan it with the QR code reader app on your phone.'

There was nothing for it other than to comply. Techies can become tetchy when you don't humour them. So I scanned it, and there, sure enough, was a picture of an admittedly beautiful bouquet – albeit not bought for me.

'There you go!' says he, triumphantly. I can barely contain my disappointment. 'Thank you', I say through clenched teeth. 'Mwah!'

'Can you see what this means?' He asks me, his voice rising in pitch as the brilliance of his own idea hurtles towards that 'Eureka' moment. 'It means we can use QR codes as a way for all the engineers and shops which use the Parcel Holders service to log deliveries even more easily! All they'd have to do is scan a QR code on a parcel label! Which will take them straight to the web page! Which...'

'We can use QR codes as a way for all the engineers and shops which use the Parcel Holders service to log deliveries even more easily!'

And with that, The Techie was, as I call it, 'off on one'. With every passing exclamation mark, my ears disengaged a little more, until at last I could see that his lips were still moving, but I'm no longer aware of any sound coming from his mouth.

Ah well. This is what it's like being married to The Techie. I might not have received a fragrant bunch of flowers, of the kind which require a vase, water and all that tricky stuff but the thing is, if he can make life easier for the engineers that use the Parcel Holders Pick-Up Drop-Off service, he will do it – even on our anniversary – because that's what techies do. They just can't help themselves.

Thank goodness though... a ring at the front door. I seize the opportunity to leave The Techie (mouth still working) and nip smartish into the hall. Oh, Interflora...

Ah, my Techie! Don't you just love him?