Wedding-day challenges
MY ONLY wife and I just celebrated our 55th wedding anniversary. That’s one hell of a lot of anniversaries!
I certainly cannot remember all of them. I do remember that I didn’t remember the anniversary in March 1971. It was later that year we came to Australia.
At that time, I was working near London for a magnificent consulting engineering company, WS Atkins and Partners, when I looked at my watch and noticed what the date happened to be... our wedding anniversary! I very hastily rang my wife to apologise for not kissing her on the way to work.
“Do you know what the date is?” I asked.
“Yes,” she replied, surprisingly calmly.
“And do you know what day it is?” I asked nervously.
“Yes,” she said, still calmly. I risked; “And do you realise it is our wedding anniversary?”
“Oh, blimey,” she exclaimed, “I had completely forgotten!”
My sigh of relief could be heard by every engineer in the office, whether single or married!
We took ourselves out to dinner that evening and had a good laugh at our mutual lack of historical awareness...
Our wedding day itself had some challenges.
March 23rd was the chosen date and the nearby very spikey High Anglican Church in Stockton on Tees was the venue.
My wife-to-be and I were fringe dwellers in that group of worthy worshippers. We were easily persuaded as to the suitability of the venue by my mother-in-law-to-be. She was a general dog’s-body at that church and its choice as a suitable venue was not a matter for debate.
The fact that the church neighboured on the town’s gas-works somewhat marred its physical appeal. The church’s passion for incense was a God-send and partially offset the ever-present smell of leaking coal gas.
My brother was my best man. He was pretty shat-off at having to miss an important cup-tie in order to fulfil his duties in that capacity!
My dad treated himself to a rare
‘‘ THE CHOSEN DATE WAS IN LENT AND THIS REALLY TESTED HIS TOLERANCE. NO DECENT PEOPLE SHOULD MARRY IN LENT IN CASE THEY WERE CAUGHT ENJOYING THEMSELVES.
new suit, unfortunately brown, and my mum found a hat that fitted most of her head.
The celebrant was the resident local vicar, unmarried and only partially in touch with the real world.
The chosen date was in Lent and this really tested his tolerance. No decent people should marry in Lent in case they were caught enjoying themselves.
Music and flowers were usually a no-no and it was only the threat of unholy mutiny by my mum-in-law-to-be that got us permission to have one hymn, one vase and two bunches of flowers for the whole ceremony.
Despite all this nonsense it was a very enjoyable occasion. My wife said yes and my brother’s team won their match despite being without their normal goalkeeper.
Our wedding photographs were mostly enhanced by the presence of a large dog doing a wee behind the wedding party, in full view of the local camera-man. He never missed a chance to photograph canine urination.
We had a lovely little wedding reception. The celebrant ate a massive amount of food, confirming my longheld view that unmarried vicars relied on parishioners marrying or dying to prevent them from starving to death.
I daringly began my bridegroom’s thank you speech by talking gibberish. This did much to reinforce my bride’s family view that she had just married an academic twit.
After 55 years I can’t remember all that I said. However I remember starting with the sentence, “Schwennell quilling hoof-below in flumen jowman”, followed by a detailed description of some aspects of my life in southern England prior to meeting my bride.
To this day I have no idea why I did it, or whether there is a real place called flumen jowman outside my imagination...
I enjoyed myself and my wife still talks to me...