The first time I saw James, he was standing in a queue outside a nightclub called Rockers, wearing a shirt with actual flames printed on it. Not a pattern that looked a bit like flames. Flames. I remember thinking, that man has no idea how ridiculous he looks, and I liked him immediately.
That was 2010. Sixteen years of knowing him, and the flame shirt still tells you most of what you need to know. James commits. Fully, without checking whether it's a good idea first.
He irons his socks. I want to say that again slowly for the people in the room who think I'm joking. He irons his socks. I don't understand it, Sarah doesn't understand it, but there it is, a small quiet act of madness that he does every week and never explains.
He's the same man who drove four hours from Leeds to help me move a sofa. Wouldn't take petrol money. Argued about it in my hallway for a good five minutes and then, having done the job, lay down on the sofa he'd just carried up two flights of stairs and fell asleep on it. That's James. Turns up, does the work, and then makes himself completely at home in the middle of it.
But there's a version of that same loyalty that he never mentioned to any of us. When his dad was ill, James drove to Cardiff every weekend for a year. A year. Not one of us knew, because he never said. I only found out much later, and even then not from him going on about it, because that isn't how he does things. He just goes, quietly, and gets on with it, and doesn't ask for anything back. Given what I've just told you about the sofa, I think we can safely say that's not really about the petrol.
And then there's the proposal. James had booked the day off, and he was not, under any circumstances, moving it. It rained on the beach at Whitstable. Properly rained, the kind of rain that should send any sensible person back to the car. James got down on one knee anyway, in it, because he'd made a plan and by God he was sticking to it. Sarah, I'm told you said yes, which either means you love him very much or you were too cold to argue. I'm going to assume it's the first one.
That's the thing about James. He doesn't do things by half, and he doesn't do them for show. He'll drive four hours and refuse your money. He'll drive to Cardiff every weekend and never breathe a word. He'll propose in a downpour because the date was booked and that was that. It's the same stubborn, quiet, ridiculous commitment every time, whether the audience is one man's sofa or the woman he loves.
Sarah, you've taken on a man who irons his socks and proposes in monsoons. I think that tells you he'll never do anything by accident. Everything with James is on purpose, all the way through, including you.
So if you'd raise your glasses. To James, who never does anything by halves, and to Sarah, who said yes anyway.
To James and Sarah.