How my parents met in a bus strike

London, March 1963. A bus strike brought the city to a halt on a rainy Tuesday. My mother, Vivien, was walking to her job at a printers' in Clerkenwell. She was three streets away when it started to rain in earnest.

My father, Stewart, had an umbrella. And, more to the point, he had the idea — which to this day nobody knows where he got it — of stopping in front of every woman he passed and offering it. He'd already tried with six, without success.

My mother was the seventh. She told him no, thank you, she didn't take umbrellas from strangers. My father, instead of leaving, followed her three streets through the rain, umbrella held over them both, in silence, all the way to the door of the printers'.

When they arrived she was dry. He was soaked through. He said, "Right, there we are, thank you for accepting," and walked off.

He came back the next day. And the next. And the next.