After more than three decades together, Simon Hattenstone and his partner Diane Taylor decided to have a civil partnership. It was a beautiful celebration before the shock of the pandemic

Diane and I had been living together for more than 30 years, and our children were 28 and 26 when we got civilled. We’d never wanted to get married. It seemed a bit too pipe and slippers. It also felt like tempting fate. We were really happy without being married, so why change things? And you can’t have more of a commitment than children. But we always said if they introduced civil partnerships for heterosexual couples, we’d get civilled.

I think friends assumed we did it primarily for tax reasons – to ensure that if one of us died, the other wasn’t left in the shit. There was an element of that. But more importantly, we actively wanted to get civilled. It actually felt really romantic – tying the civil knot as an expression of love after all this time together. It was such a beautiful day, in every way. 3 January 2020, just after civil partnerships had been legalised for opposite-sex couples, and we almost made history. We were only the fourth heterosexual couple to be civilled in Haringey. Get in!