I like the serendipitous nature of the net; the way you set off on an apparently straightforward quest and end up somewhere entirely unexpected.

I had googled ‘Darby and Joan’, hoping to find an appropriate image of a contented married couple, not in the first flush of youth.  But it tended to be people rather more advanced in years than I had in mind, such as

Then, scrolling on down the page, I was  rather surprised to find an image that didn’t really belong in such company: the one of Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall which I’ve used at the top of this posting. OK, she’s carrying a bunch of towels and he’s holding a shirt (rather than a Lucky Strike or a glass of bourbon), but they aren’t the first couple that comes to mind when you say ‘Darby and Joan’.

Intrigued, I went on to check the context in which the pic was used. It is from a blog called Tsukareru, run by someone who describes herself as ‘a semi- professional vagabond, a capricious girl in Japan’. She is ‘originally from Kentucky’ and now lives ‘in central Japan in the shadow of Mt. Fuji’.

Among her varied interests is a popular American radio series of the early 50s called ‘Bold Venture’, one episode of which is called ‘Darby and Joan incorporated’.  And who are the stars of the series? None other than Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. Bogie plays Slate Shannon, owner of a hotel in pre-Castro Havana who spends a lot of time on his yacht Bold Venture, accompanied by Sailor Duvall (Bacall), his ‘sidekick and ward’, as the Wikepedia entry coyly puts it.  The setting  has echoes of To Have and Have Not, their first film together (and, in fact, Bacall’s first appearance in film). You know the one: where Bacall (Slim) says to the Bogie character

You know you don't have to act with me, Steve. You don't have to say anything, and you don't have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle, don't you, Steve? You just put your lips together and... blow.

So why is ‘Bold Venture’ important to me?  It’s because, in the early 50s, I went regularly to Germany to stay with my friend Peter Pretschner, and we both discovered the show on AFN, the American Forces Network, aimed at the thousands of US service people still based in Germany.  It was a high spot of the week for both of us, and I hadn’t thought of it for years until I came across it yesterday, while googling ‘Darby and Joan’.

(If you’re interested, there’s a dedicated website where you can listen to all the surviving episodes,   http://www.bold-venture.co.uk/)

Anyway, so why was I googling ‘Darby and Joan’?  It’s because of something charming which we witnessed last weekend. We had been invited to celebrate a friend’s 65th birthday, and arranged to stay the night at the little cottage of a friend of ours, Margaret, who lived within easy walking distance of the party, and whom we had not seen since she lost her husband of more than 40 years.  When we turned up at her place, we were greeted by her and her new husband, Tony, who had lost his own wife at about the same time. When they had met to exchange condolences it quickly became clear that they wanted to be with each other. And it was thrilling to see how clearly they belonged together.  Maybe not Bogie & Bacall; let’s say halfway between them and the other couple.