Many couples keep things special with a regular date night or a movie night – but there will be few who have gone the extra mile quite like Ian and Yvette Perryman.
For Monday night in their home in Bristol has been renamed Martini Mondays, and the couple have made it the most special night of the week. Every Monday for 20 years, the Perrymans have sat down to watch a classic film from the black and white movie era, dressing up for the occasion or in the theme of whichever movie it is they intend to watch.
The couple have turned a room in their Westbury Park home into a special art-deco inspired viewing room, which is covered in film memorabilia on the walls and a fancy gin bar, stocked with more than 80 varieties.
Next Monday will be the 20th anniversary of their weekly tradition, and also the 1,000th time they’ve settled down to watch a movie. And they will be watching, as they do on the first Monday of March every year, a Noel Coward film called The Astonished Heart’ – the film which first began their tradition.
“It was early March 2005. It was a Monday,” explained Ian. “I worked locally at the time and popped back home at lunchtime to pick something up. The lovely Yvette had set up her ironing board in front of the telly, on which Noel Coward’s film ‘The Astonished Heart’ had just started.
“She said: ‘You’d love this. I’ll record it and we’ll watch it tonight over dry martinis’, which is what Noel and Celia Johnson were tucking into at that moment. This was not a usual event. Who doesn’t hate a Monday? So I readily agreed. And we did,” he added.
The film isn’t exactly the love-affirming romantic classic that you’d expect to trigger a 20-year tradition. Made in 1950 it’s a classic of the ‘love triangle leads to heartbreak’ genre, starring its writer Noel Coward as a psychiatrist who is married to his wife, played by Celia Johnson, but begins an affair with her friend, played by Margaret Leighton, and their affair ends in acrimony and tragedy.
But Ian said he loved the film, and the extra effort they went to, so every Monday since then, they’ve done something similar – and taken it up a few notches by turning their front room into a 1930s-style cinema lounge.
“We have watched a black and white ‘classic’ film, bolstered by a full cocktail shaker of dry martinis,” said Ian. “And so ‘Martini Monday’ was born. We dress appropriately when the film merits or it is a special occasion. Each anniversary on or around March 5 we watch ‘The Astonished Heart’ again. Mondays haven’t been so bad,” he added.