'The Anchor' by Steven Moss

For our anniversary, my partner brought home an anchor, taken from the salvage yard next to the Docks - grabbed the palm, hauled its arm into the kitchen and started prepping a seafood paella. There the anchor remained, one rusting eye only partially covered with whelks; submerged in washing, the shank and the stock convenient hangers for drying towels, dressing gowns and other ungainly items of laundry.

For the next anniversary, we planned on spending more time with each other and restoring the anchor seemed like a project we could share without spending too much on the bill, so we suited up, dived in and stayed up late, albeit swaying occasionally but we’d reach for the band to secure us; filing and filling the rings, priming and painting until months later the gleaming crown resembled something new, something not out of place in a Marine Museum.

We fixed that shiny anchor on a customised stand right where the TV used to be. A conversation piece out of the sea.

As it goes, by the next milestone, we’d outgrown our fixation with nautical weights. The anchor’s pallor darkened the room, the fluke disrupted Feng Shui, so we went for the throat – grabbed the anchor and swapped it one night with the couple next door for a pair of spinnakers lifted from an ocean-going yacht.

Now, we spend our evenings leaning from the living room window; hand in hand, sails breeze bound.