We started at fifty one and fifty three and have told nobody since

Four years ago, at fifty one and fifty three, we tried something in our own front room on a whim and have done it most weeks since. We have never met another person who does it. We have never been to anything. We would not know where to stand or who to talk to first.

Fifty five and fifty seven, the Stockport side, married twenty two years. Everything we know we worked out ourselves, slowly, in a house with nobody in it but the two of us, and we are quite aware that this means we have probably invented several things that already had perfectly good names.

What we are short of is somebody we can put questions to. Not lessons, and not a room full of people. Another couple, or a person or two, who would have dinner with us now and then and would not mind being asked something obvious. We have a list. It is long. Most of it is not what you would expect and a good deal of it is about how other people fit this into an ordinary week alongside jobs and families.

We are not restless and we are not looking to expand anything. We have been married a long time, we are extremely settled, and neither of us has the slightest interest in involving another person in the marriage. This is a request for company and information, in that order.

If you are much younger than us, that is entirely fine. If you find the idea of two people our age asking beginner questions slightly comic, so do we, and we would still like the dinner.