One Wedding

I attended the first wedding of my life. It was emotional. It was Quaker.

There were friends and family (lots of family) and two people who looked like their nerves had flown off with their hearts. We sat in a room in silence for 45 minutes, but people spoke, like the sturdy father stood up and read something from the Bible (1 Corinthians chapter 13:1-13). As he spoke his tenor voice tremorred until tears were being wiped away off his elderly cheek, and I looked at Claire and cried myself. The silence made everything more intense and more surprisingly truthful. I am used to showmanship and bravado but here was naked truth, and it moved me to tears. A woman stood and sang an old Irish song with the clarity of an unearthly being. The brother recited a poem and turned to the bride, his sister, and said shyly 

"Congratulations". 

The two said their vows which began with "I take my friend Claire/Paul..." and they both had tears and tissues at hand. Later on in the evening, at the reception everything was less sobered and by the end kids and oldies were fist pumping to We Built This City, plus the food was classic. I shared a rolled cigarette with an aunt. We ambled up Castle Acre, a ruin of a Norman fortress dating back from over a thousand years ago. Everyone looked wonderful and I raised my heart and ambitions to Claire and Paul. The happy couple.

(I Corinthians)

13 If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. ² If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. ³ If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. ⁶ Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. ⁷ It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
⁸ Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. ⁹ For we know in part and we prophesy in part, ¹⁰ but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. ¹¹ When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. ¹² For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
¹³ And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

Newsweek

Sometimes there are too many things to unravel and so there be no point in trying to make sense of it all. Just let it slide.

A friend from Santa Barbara is making her way to my boat right now. She is a hapless traveller and therefore got stuck crossing the River Thames – don't we all. She’s a friend from the blazer days. A double entendre because that’s a metaphor for when I was a serious Masters student reading the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas; and the second meaning less intelligent.

My first love was fired from his job in the media. I invited him to discuss and recoup on the boat, we smoked cigs and drank Tyskies and made wishes that everything would be fine. Everything is going to be all right.

Tomorrow I attend a wedding of two great friends. Claire, the bride, is my age and beautiful and an artist. Her speciality is print-making. Paul Scattergood, groom to be is a tall stringy fellow with a dash of golden hair and blue eyes you'd find in a Narnia adventure. The two kids are becoming adults and there’s a ceremony to mark their transition with the added element of eternal love! Can you get more fantastical than that? Some dragons maybe.

The job is there hanging like Damocles’ sword. Can’t wait for yet another curve ball, that’s all I’m divulging.

Sang in a tribute band (badly) on Tuesday.

Last week I spent fifteen minutes in Edinburgh. Probably the most futile task I had to accomplish but hell I did it. The moral of the story is (spending those 15 stressful minutes jumping off from one train arriving at Edinburgh Waverley and then jumping on to the return train back to London King’s Cross): It’s not where you go that matters, it’s all about the journey.

Sometimes Don’t Think. Just let it slide.

The Boat Weekend

It’s weird for the front space of my boat to be empty now. The weather stayed bright and summery for the whole weekend. People lounged about and swung their legs over the sides, we lay on the roof and others stood tall upon it to gaze over the waters. We encountered a family of ducklings, six of them plus mother, and another duck family made up of only two, one mother and one newborn paddling with all its fluffy might to keep up with her in the shallows as mama glided by. At one point there were eight friends and myself at the front of the boat and it filled me with joy. ‘Joy is the kind of happiness that does not depend on what happens’, said a monk one point in time. And I agree and that’s what I felt for the whole weekend, surrounded by friends and family. ‘Thank you for the days’, as the Kinks also once said. And so, with phrases heard and hence remembered, memories made, we float on by with the ups and downs of the tides.

Two Tramps, Unknown

There is a park in Paddington that is inhabited by three tramps. One named Harold, another named Barry and the third is unknown. Two of them now sit on a bench over looking the grass sharing a can of bitter; they overlook Barry who is sleeping on the grass at the foot of a tree trunk. One of them gets up and arthritically stamps towards Barry, standing above him he loudly asks,

Harold: Are you going to give us a song Barry?

Harold: Are you going to give us a song today, Barry?

Harold: ARE YOU GONNAGIV’US A SON –

(sharply interrupted)

Barry: You kicked me and I won’t give you no song no.

After a moment

Harold: I didn’t kick ya

Barry: You fuckin did.

Harold: Ah’ch

Harold waves his hand, indignant, and wanders back to the bench. As he is about to sit down for the tenth time today, back to the bench where he always sits with the other, drinking can after can bought with the little change he finds, Harold turns and looks at Barry in disgust. That miserable wretch curled up in sodden red blankets on a dried out lawn in mid-September. How can he live with himself? How can a man with any sense of decency make proper conversation with such a wretched old pile of rags. How can he think?

Harold: You sleep all of day there and the coppers’ll come and nick you again Barry.

Duly ignored, perhaps he doesn’t hear well

Harold: Bet you don’t suspect a thing but I know I know I know what’s in stall for you. They’ll think you been doing drugs and nick ya and take you away, then you won’t have the sun anymore, and you won't want to sing in the daytime just want to cry in the night. For fuck’s sake Barry - are you gonna give us a song - dammit?

Barry pulls himself together and gathers the blankets up around himself, and leans his scabby back against the tree trunk and belches a little. Then he sings

The pigeon flaps his wings around

But ain’t no fucking sound abound

What we want is light and air

But no one wants us here

and no body knows us here

“JOIN IN – it’s a bloody chorus!”

No body wants us here

Oh, no body wants us here

Sirens ring through the city air and Barry and the unknown one claps.

Sylvan Post

After the regular Tuesday night pub quiz in Forest Hill, I decided to hand deliver a letter to a friend of mine who isn’t well. A Get Well Soon card.

Walking the ascent up a South East London path I peered through suburban windows and was stared down by a well-fed tom cat. And you think, we shoot off e-mails, hundreds of them daily, and text people, and if you can be bothered make a phone call or two, but how rare is it to be a physical messenger?

Carrying a message in-hand to a person, even if you don’t meet them in person; such as simply popping it through their letter-box still feels more intimate. And you get to see where the letter goes and what space that person inhabits. It’s a gesture. But as actions speak louder than words, and like parents who can rest assured only when they’ve seen the house their offspring move in to, it felt good to post that letter through the flap. It felt like actually caring.

A Day In The Life (of Marmaduke)