Forty years ago tomorrow Shirley and I were married at St Martin's Church in the north Lincolnshire village of Owston Ferry. She was twenty two and I had just turned twenty eight.
As I recall, it was a very happy day when that virtual champagne bottle was smashed across the bow of our marriage. "God bless her and all who sail in her". It was witnessed by friends and family. A good number of the attendees are not here any more - my mum Doreen and my older brother Paul, Shirley's parents Charlie and Winnie, my grandmother Phyllis and Shirley's grandmother Minnie, my friend Ron Budd who died of alcoholism and several of Shirley's aunts and uncles. They exist only in our memories. I can hear them in the next room.
It was an inexpensive wedding. For example, the wedding breakfast was a simple buffet meal in a nearby pub and our wedding car was in fact Charlie's VW Passat driven by one of her many cousins. The weather was typical of late October - blustery but thankfully dry. Prince Charles had married Diana Spencer just four months before in St Paul's Cathedral, London. There was far, far less pomp and circumstance at our wedding. In fact there wasn't any.
We had just bought our first house in the Crookesmoor area of Sheffield. It cost us £15,250 and we picked up the keys for it on the Thursday before the wedding. There was a lot of work to do on that house before we could move in and that's the reason we didn't have a proper honeymoon.
Instead, after the wedding breakfast, we jumped in Shirley's little cream-coloured Mini and headed south to the city of Lincoln for one night. We had booked a room in the very modest St Catherine's Hotel. In the morning, after a full English breakfast, we wandered up Steep Hill to Lincoln's magnificent cathedral. Did you know that it was the tallest building in the entire world from 1311 to 1548? Furthermore, if the central spire had not been blown down in a storm, it would have remained the tallest building till 1889 when The Eiffel Tower was completed in Paris.. I find this information pretty awesome.
Anyway, me and my lovely bride are heading back to Lincoln tomorrow - this time for a two night stay in the Holiday Inn Express near Brayford Pool. We shall climb back up Steep Hill to the cathedral and if we spot a special something she wants, I will buy Shirley a gift to mark our ruby wedding anniversary. Forty years is quite an achievement - I am sure you will agree - though that blustery day in Owston Ferry, by The River Trent still seems like yesterday.
from Yorkshire Pudding https://ift.tt/3jqQg1p
ليست هناك تعليقات:
إرسال تعليق