Symbolic Forest

I found out later that it was quite a historic room, with all its mouldings and recherché cornicing. Back in the 1910s, when equality for women was all the rage, Sylvia Pankhurst held suffragette meetings there. I didn’t know this at the time, though.

W and P looked each other in the eyes, and kissed, and the congregation burst out into a long, long round of applause, so much so that the registrar was almost bowled away with the emotion. So much so, she started playing the Citizenship Ceremony tape instead of the Wedding Ceremony one, and the room was suddenly filled with the National Anthem.

I did write about W and P’s wedding at the time; but looking back ten months later, this is what sticks in my mind.

Keyword noise: 2006, Civil Partnership, friends, marriage, memories, Memories Of The Year, wedding.

I always enjoy W’s parties, even the ones I can’t remember afterwards.^* And, because it was their wedding, this one seemed extra-special.

I’d been given the job of semi-official photographer, so I tried to stay more or less sober. It also gave me an excuse to constantly rush around the building shoving my camera into people’s faces. I would probably have done this regardless, but it was nice to have an excuse for it.

Eventually, people started dancing, so there was nothing for it but to put the camera down and bounce around like a mad thing. I don’t think I did anyone any serious injuries, but equally I’m not going to be winning any dancing prizes in the near future. Then, when I was exhausted, I’d flop down on the sofa for five minutes before picking up the camera again and repeating the cycle. If I saw someone posing for someone else’s camera, I’d try to quickly grab a sneaky shot from the side. Hopefully all the other party guests think they look good in profile. The main room was lit by beautiful blue fairy lights: it looked wonderful, but it was so dark that half the time I had no idea what I was photographing.^**

I was still emotional by the end of the evening. I hugged W before I left, and wanted to tell him: have a wonderful life together. W and P make an amazing couple, and everyone who knows them wants them to be happy forever after.

If you want to see the rest of the wedding photos – not that they will be of much interest unless you know P and W yourself, of course – most of them are here.

* such as the one where I got so drunk I collapsed in a flowerbed. There are quite a lot of people in London who have no clue what my name is, but if you say “you know, the one who collapsed in the flowerbed at W’s party” will know exactly who you mean.

** One technical photo tip: I was lucky that the house has very light, almost-white walls and ceilings throughout. This means that – if you have a swivel-head flashgun with good automatic metering – you can point your flash directly up at the ceiling to get nice, even, flattering lighting. It does mean, though, that the photo lighting is nothing like the original scene. This photo was taken in a room barely light enough to not walk into other people, and all the light comes from the flashgun attached to the camera.

Keyword noise: bounce flash, celebration, Civil Partnership, London, marriage, party, photography, travel, wedding.

I had no idea what to expect at the wedding. I’ve, unsurprisingly, never been to a Civil Partnership Ceremony before; but equally, I’ve never been to any sort of civil wedding before.

The wedding started late, and the registrar seemed a little stressed. “Sorry for the delay,” she said, “but the couple at the previous wedding weren’t sure it was going ahead.” You could sense a long, long backstory behind that sentence.

The ceremony was short. W and P strode up the aisle together, and the registrar explained what they were getting into. They faced each other, and looked into each other’s eyes as they gave their declarations and vows. My eyes were slightly damp, and they received a long, long round of applause, which seemed to surprise the registrar. “You are a popular couple,” she said. And, bar the posing for photos, it was already over. W and P are Registered Partners. We all rolled out into the garden for champagne.

Keyword noise: celebration, Civil Partnership, friends, London, marriage, photography, wedding.

Well, I’m back at the office again, pleased to see that WordPress‘s advance-publishing feature works as advertised, to get Saturday’s post up whilst I was still waking up in my hotel bed in Barking.

I had a wonderful weekend away, got a bit emotional at W and P’s wedding, and danced very enthusiastically at their wedding party. I’ll be posting more about it in the next few days, partly because I’m going away again next week, and “what I did on my holidays” will be easy to get written in advance. So, coming soon on this blog: flirting by chocolate, failed blogstalking, sugarcube art (with hide and seek), a stressed registrar, adventures on the District Line, posing for photos, fairy lights, laughter, and lashings and lashings of ginger beer champagne.

Photos will be coming too, once I get my rolls and rolls of film back from the chemists, and get them all scanned. I’m old-fashioned, me.

Keyword noise: Civil Partnership, holiday, London, travel, wedding.

Just another brief snippets post. Tonight I’m busily packing, because tomorrow I’m zooming off to London. Hurrah!

One thing that’s been on my mind recently: when the government came up with Civil Partnerships, did they deliberately invent as cumbersome a term as they could, so that people would end up calling it marriage? Consider these two statements:

“My friends W and P are holding a civil partnership registration ceremony.”

“My friends W and P are getting married.”

Now, which of those are people actually going to say?

I’m only in London for the weekend, sadly. I will be spending most of the weekend trying to find the register office on Bow Road, because my friends W and P are getting married there.^* Most of what I know about Bow Road, I learned here.

(someone should probably explain to me some time that London is more than just its railway system. In fact, there are entire areas of London with no trains. That’s what the rumours say, anyway. I don’t think there’s any way to actually get to those places.)

Someone recently reached this site by searching for “shimura curves mailing list”. I don’t know much about pure maths, but I asked someone from the band Shimura Curves, and they do indeed have one.^**

To close, a sign which has been hanging around our redecorated offices lately. It made me smile:

WET PAINT!
Please be careful
Touching up drives me CRAZY.

I have to admit, I often feel the same way too. Have a nice weekend yourselves.

* Except that they’re not. Because they’re registering a civil partnership. But you knew that.

** Update, August 24_{th 2020:} I am presuming this mailing list no longer exists, as it was hosted on Yahoo Groups.

Keyword noise: Bow Road, Civil Partnership, London, marriage, music, Shimura Curves, wedding, wet paint.

Heard on the radio this morning: a member of the Lords claiming that gay marriage Civil Partnerships are a bad thing because they’re unpatriotic.^* This country was built, apparently, on the values of two parents, their children, and the sacrament of marriage.^**

As I’ve said before, my mother is becoming part of the Genealogy Boom, one of the thousands of people who are using the internet to research the names of their ancestors. And, one of the good things about this is that the thousands of people doing this are finding out that the typical Family Values chorus – in the past, everyone lived in a happy, stable two-parent family and the world was a Better Place – really is a load of rubbish. In the past, people didn’t divorce. That’s because they couldn’t afford to. They still had affairs, though, and multiple relationships, and children out of wedlock. Every family has tangled knots in its family tree, because the people in the past really did behave just as badly, or well, as people do today. Family Values is a political myth, and nothing more.

* I tried to look up which specific homophobic peer I was listening to, but her name isn’t listed on the Today website running order, and I don’t want to have to listen to it all again just to catch her name.

** although she claimed that even though she was describing marriage as a sacrament she didn’t mean it in a religious way.

Keyword noise: Civil Partnership, conservatism, divorce, family, gay marriage, genealogy, history, homophobia, nuclear family, social conservatism.