Fight For Your Dream by Elaine Hazel Sharp

carpet that had been fitted only four days previously. As Nigel struggled to compose himself, I began to see the funny side of our little ordeal, and burst into hysterical laughter. Here was I, in my posh wedding dress, diamante headdress and 10ft veil, watching my husband of 11 hours rolling around on a sea of coloured balloons in top hat and tails..., how bizarre was that?
    Either an individual, or a number of people were intent on making our wedding night a night to remember, and we had our suspicions! It was courtesy of MARK & SUE: thanks, folks!
    Day one of married life started off as eventful as the previous evening. We’d spent all the money we’d accumulated on building our love nest, so had very little spare cash to go away on a honeymoon, let alone to somewhere exotic, like couples manage to do today. After all the hard work we’d endured building our house, Nigel was adamant that we went away for a few days for a little peace and relaxation. Both of us loved North Wales, which we had visited several times throughout our time together. A few weeks before we were due to marry, Nigel informed me that he had made a booking reservation for our honeymoon. It was for a four-night stay at an idyllic location, the ‘Tyne Cornel Hotel’, overlooking Tally Lynches Lake.
    It was really strange, waking up in our new home the morning after our wedding day. It had taken us two years of hard graft to get here, but we’d finally made it. Yesterday morning I was Miss Elaine Allen, and today I was Mrs Elaine Sharp. This was going to take some getting used to. To start the day I decided that a relaxing, hot bath was just what I needed. However, it didn’t quite turn out as planned. The run up to our wedding day, like most weddings, had been fraught. Trying to complete the house to a reasonable standard to move in prevented us having the time to flush through the plumbing system for a test run. Great! No matter how much water I ran, I never managed to maintain a clean run of fresh water. ‘I think it’s cleared,’ I shouted to Nigel, who was still prostrate in bed. ‘Oh, good,’ he laughed, ‘I’ll jump in after you then.’ No such luck: just when I thought it was safe to get into the water, the tap coughed and spluttered out another dollop of green flux! ‘Oh, well, there’s a first time for everything, I thought, and climbed into the bath anyway.
    One hour later, to our surprise, Mark and Sue arrived with a bottle of Champagne and orange juice. It was a beautiful, warm, sunny morning, and the bucks fizz went down a treat.
    When we arrived at the hotel, it was still as good as we’d remembered. A great addition to the facilities was a swimming pool that had just been completed. The weather was as good in Wales as when we had left home a few hours earlier, so we made the most of the welcoming, cool pool, and both had a quick dip before getting showered for dinner. Wow, married life seemed pretty good! Wales is very well known for having a great deal of cold, wet weather, but it seems the gods must having been watching over us, because we were blessed with blue skies for the whole of our stay. In fact, the weather was so good that we decided to delay our departure and stay at the hotel until late afternoon, so we could soak up the sun for a few more hours. Big mistake! Driving home that evening, Nigel looked decidedly ill, he was turning a lighter shade of pale by the minute. It could only mean one thing: sunstroke! Five days of marriage, and my wedding vows were about to swing in to action... ‘In sickness and in health’.
    Although Nigel and I were very much in love with each other, neither of us found the transition to marriage very easy. We had both lived at home up until getting married (although I did spend many nights staying at Nigel’s mum and dad’s) so, unlike many other couples of our age, we had never lived together. Nigel’s mum used