Graham Carter - the voice of age and experience

THE champagne corks are popping in Carter Towers after it emerged that I am going to be a father-in-law.

In other words: my son has only gone and got engaged.

So we are looking forward to welcoming Hannah to the Carter family, which is, of course, a rare honour that is afforded to only a select few. Lucky girl.

Now, we all know that times have changed, and life is different in just about every respect from the world as we once knew it, and that certainly goes for proposals in the 30-odd years since I did it.

One difference is we knew our son was going to propose before his fiancée did, and therefore before anybody knew the answer.

That’s because news travels so fast these days, and not necessarily in the correct order, and there was a danger that it would get out on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, or leak out on to the information superhighway some other way, before we got to know about it.

So our son kindly sent my wife a text to tell us of the imminent popping of the question.

They were on holiday in Portugal at the time, and because her parents were there too, he was able to get her father’s permission first.

Or at least that is what we are assuming. As we go to press, details are still coming in, and we aren’t sure whether that quaint old custom still applies to young people today.

It’s lucky that we were sure what the answer to the big question would be, or else it would have made for a really nervous hour, and a potentially disastrous outcome.

To say we are delighted he asked her and that she said yes would be an understatement. Although we are not sure if it was love at first sight for them, I think we knew, as soon as we first met Hannah, that they were made for each other.

And there are other reasons for celebrating.

As I think you will agree, it’s a relief when somebody proposes to somebody without making a big fuss about it.

That’s another new thing about proposals that I, with my old-fashioned 20th century ways, find difficult to come to terms with: all the crazy ways that people now come up with to make a big show of something that used to be done in private.

My son could have done it at half-time at the match, for instance, or spelled out ‘Will you marry me?’ in roses on her route to work.

And I know if I had done it that way, my wife would have taken a very dim view, and possibly decided not to be my wife at all.

Just as bad: they could have booked a trip to Paris and done it on top of the Eiffel Tower. Indeed, there are a thousand and one alternative corny ways of asking, none of which I really approve of, and not even one that I saw on Facebook, which was putting the ring round a kitten’s collar. Yuk.

I even recently heard of a Chinese man who dressed up as a carrot and got 48 of his friends to do the same, before whipping out a microphone in the middle of town and proposing while the watching crowd shouted: “Marry him! Marry him!”

Call me old fashioned if you like, but if I had been her, I would have punched him, not married him.

And you can call me old-fashioned when I say this, too: getting married is the best thing I ever did, so we are drinking champagne all week.