Last Friday night I told Alicia that work had given me a couple of tickets for a VIP tour of a factory down in Southampton. Bemused, and somewhat exhausted she didn’t even bat an eyelid when I told her she’d have to get up at 6:30 for the privilege. Any of you who know Alicia will know that 6:30 is early.

This, it transpired, was somewhat short of the truth and when we got off the train in Chichester the game was up. She knew we were going to spend the day on the beach.

The beach was virtually empty and we had a lovely quiet morning eating smoked salmon and crackers for breakfast, followed almost immediately by BBQ’d chicken and salad for lunch. We ate too much and had to walk it off. Being the only two on the beach we dutifully packed up the beach-hut (including our shoes) and set off around East Head.

Walking barefoot wasn’t an issue until we reached a point at which the beach turned from sand into pebbles and, overcome with pain, we were forced to turn off the beach and clamber over the sand-dunes.

It was then that Alicia received her second surprise of the day, I knelt down and asked:

请你嫁给我吧？
 

Words are simply not enough to describe the moments that followed. We looked at each other for what seemed like an eternity before Alicia started to weep and flung her arms around me. Behind the floods of tears I saw the happiest smile I have ever seen. And then she replied,

好吧！
 

Inside I felt a brief moment of panic; there I was trying to be clever and ask in Chinese but hadn’t given a second thought to what the reply might be. I knew 好 meant good, but what about that 吧 on the end. But, in that moment, words didn’t matter I knew she’d said, “Yes.”