This is a personal blog about my family and me. It's to provide recent news to family further afield, and friends - a precursor to social media: FB, Twitter, Instagram
Showing posts with label wedding anniversary. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wedding anniversary. Show all posts
Apart from the day the glaziers took the roof off the conservatory, it hasn't rained much this month and the leaves are yellow and gently falling. In this photo, 38 years ago, the weather was similar. The rain held off and the leaves gently fell. It was a good day and the start of a good life.
The men of this somewhat yellow photo have fallen now.
My father is out of hospital after several weeks. He and my mother are together to celebrate their 65 wedding anniversary. But their spirits are not up. Mum is happier now that Dad is with her, but he's bed bound, not only can't get up and out of bed but can hardly turn himself in the bed. His only comfort is listening to audio books. Mum was eating with other people in the care home till he came out, and now her only company is him. As aged Aunty E keeps saying "it's old age and dry rot!" And Mum and Dad feel rotten.
Nevertheless, their loyal younger friends in the parish gathered today for their anniversary mass, signed a card for them, iced a cake and sent sweet smelling jasmine. Mum and Dad must have done something special to have so many people care.
It's interesting how many poultry derived idioms we have in the language, isn't it? And now so few of us have hens, we've forgotten or don't realise where they came from:
gone to roost,
pecking order
flown the coop
hens' teeth (they don't have any)
We went out yesterday to old gliding and Oxford friends' 40th wedding anniversary.
"You need tolerance, perseverance and wisdom"
to keep a marriage that long said a friend who raised a toast. May my son and his fiancée, marrying on Oct 25th at Newark, have those gifts too.
When we came home, it was past dusk and the hens had flown the coop and gone to roost. I had had to hunt the garden in the dark, till I found two of the three in the vine. "Vine lot of trouble" remarked my husband! The third hen, Lady Grey, didn't turn up till this morning, and now all three are happily eating left over rice curry from a few days ago. Cluck, cluck, clllcckk! Happy hens.
My parents celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary. Too old to organise it, too tired, too fragile, they weren't going to do anything, and when my brother #2 asked told him so, and said,
"You want something, you organise it."
And he did. He and his lovely wife organised us getting up there, booked our hotel, contacted our cousin to borrow her holiday cottage for some of us, arranged the evening meal, ferried elderly parents and aunt to and fro. He even told the Queen and she sent a card of congratulations.
We had a celebratory mass in the morning, followed by lunch on the church lawn with the St Vincent de Paul Society people helping. (Did you know how much this charity does for old people and others that are excluded? They work quietly, behind the scenes, visiting, liaising with families, driving people to events or doctors when they can't get there themselves.)
In the evening, the family shared a meal at a local hostelry, toasted the happy couple. It's nearly my brother #1 and his wife's 30th anniversary, and they brought out the card that my parents had given them 30 years ago, where they'd written,
The first thirty years are the worst
Brother and wife brought original card, and added their annotation:
You were right The first thirty years were terrible. Any tips for the next thirty years?
My cousin wrote and sang a song for us.
Happy anniversary to a couple most fair to Jean and Joe a diamond pair!
It was great seeing my family together, my family that lives in America and came over for the occasion, my cousin and his wife, my sister and every one. We exchanged casual news over Yorkshire beers, learned where we are with our jobs at the moment, and who has a new partner and where people are living or planning to move to, or what people are studying at the moment. I miss some of them, living far away.
This was a lovely opportunity and a happy occasion. And I hope that my brother #1 and his wife have a lovely 30th (pearl) wedding anniversary next month.
Husband's university friends have been married much longer than us. Today a couple celebrated their fortieth wedding anniversary by inviting loads of their long term friends for a trip on the River Isis from Oxford. The boat was covered with ruby red balloons and streamers, with around 80 friends. We ate, we drank, we talked. The weather was great, neither too hot nor too cold.
One of husband's friends from college (see reunion here) is partner to a fellow post-graduate student at the Open University, so we spent some time happily comparing notes on our progress, our supervisors, theory (Bourdieu if you're interested), and we admonished anyone who dared ask, "When are you finishing?" That sort of question is one you just do not ask a post grad student - it's as rude as asking a woman how old she is - as this grad comic illustrates.
And just to add to that insult, someone asked me if I'd used my bus pass to get there today. I'm not only too young to get a bus pass yet, but they've raised the age at which I'll be eligible for it. So insults, unintentional insults flew round the boat.
These insults were not as bad though as those in today's Times Style magazine, in which AA Gill slated The Oxford Ashmolean restaurant and Oxford people - calling its female students "lesbians in blue stocking", and the restaurant "full of very old people. A sea of thin white hair." As the director of the Ashmolean met fellow PG and FPG's partner this morning, he was railing about the review. FPG's partner has something to do with the Ashmolean museum so the encounter meant they nearly missed the boat, and then they wouldn't have been able to tell me how rude the Times was.
It was a lovely day with lots of lovely intelligent and cheerful people to talk to. Perhaps AA Gill of the Times doesn't know what intelligent conversation can be about.
Husband wins brownie points for wedding anniversary present. Ten is tin or pewter, and I once had champagne glasses with pewter stems. He's got two silver stemmed (with hearts) champagne glasses engraved for us.
Thirty years ago today, I saw my Aunty and Uncle - the uncle who died earlier this year. It's their wedding anniversary today and this is the first one she'll have without him. I tried to find a photo of them together that day, but can't, so here is one of my parents that day instead.
Some residents of the old town visited Highgrove House today to look round the gardens. I love the hosts of hostas and the reuse of wood or objets trouves. The Duke of Cornwall (aka Prince Charles) also has loads of plants that we have in our garden, and things that I had in my old garden, like his flower meadow - I attempted to grow wild flowers at the bottom of my old garden.
It was a nice way to spend our eighth wedding anniversary (bronze). We've ended the day sharing a bottle of Godbillon-Pointillart champagne.
We went out to a prom concert last night. If you saw it on BBC 4 you'll know how smashing it was. The theme was French with music from the ilks of Rameau, but the difference was that there were dancers too, dancing to this 18th century French music, which must have been written to dance to. Initially these were classical ballet dancers, but even so, they danced to the audience, making us laugh, not being serious. However, the energy came from the Soweto dancers, who drummed and danced and played the violin too. With steps like the Russian one where you put your hands on the floor and spin round your legs so you have to jump over your own legs, and leaps high into the air, with the occasional squawk the audience was enraptured. The enthusiasm and energy grew throughout the second half of the performance, with the Monteverdi choir encouraging by doing Mexican waves. It was a most memorable concert for a wedding anniversary.
And when we got home, we found one of our children had left a bowl of cat food out, so we were asking ourselves which of them didn't know that the cat had gone, lost, dead. But it turned out that youngest had seen the cat. He isn't dead, but thin and slow but back again.
July 15th is our seventh wedding anniversary. I think this is quite a good number for starters, though not a reason for resting on our laurels. You have to work at a relationship to keep it going well. Nevertheless, between us we notch up over 50 years of good marriages because husband was married for 27 years and I was married for 17 years before. So
27+17+7 > 50
Perhaps one year we'll have a big party to celebrate lots of years in total even if he and I won't make ruby together.
Boomer! My business card says I'm a university researcher but another card would say: associate lecturer, tutor, teacher, volunteer, wife, mother, stepmother and grandmother.
Or choir member, or glider pilot, or that I have my black belt 2nd Dan in tae kwon do
Apart from the day the glaziers took the roof off the conservatory, it hasn't rained much this month and the leaves are yellow and gently falling. In this photo, 38 years ago, the weather was similar. The rain held off and the leaves gently fell. It was a good day and the start of a good life.
As aged Aunty E keeps saying "it's old age and dry rot!" And Mum and Dad feel rotten.
Today is brother and wife's pearl wedding anniversary. That's thirty years of marriage and cool! Congratulations.
My parents celebrated their diamond wedding anniversary. Too old to organise it, too tired, too fragile, they weren't going to do anything, and when my brother #2 asked told him so, and said,
