We travelled across the country on Friday morning, booked into a hotel, and joined some friends for their wedding a little later in the day.
The wedding was wonderful. A proper “happy day” that left everybody I saw smiling and telling stories from their past. We shared a table with two older people, and I did my usual thing - breaking the ice, making conversation, and taking an interest in them. The old chap sitting next to me regaled me with all sorts of stories of racing motorbikes in the 1960s, and building parts of the Voyager space probe in his back garden (true story!).
I love listening to people’s stories. Everybody has a story - it’s just most of the time we’re too wrapped up in our lives to stop and listen.
Later in the evening I spotted the same chap dancing his feet off to Herman’s Hermits in the middle of the dancefloor - having found a similarly skilled accomplice. That’s something else I love - when the most unlikely characters show off a skill few people know about. They made everybody else on the dancefloor look rather ordinary for some time.
When they hugged at the end, I grinned a huge toothy grin and my daughter asked what I was smiling at.
“Oh, nothing…”
There’s just something nice about weddings. Sure, our paths might not always lead where we might hope - for the couple getting married yesterday it wasn’t their first go at it - but throughout the day there was an underlying feeling of hope, of new starts, and of happiness.
I know I’m the biggest, softest, most romantic idiot in the world - but it was still sort of lovely.
This morning we woke up in the hotel at about 7am, and found our way down for breakfast an hour later. Little by little our daughters joined us, and we found ourselves split across two tables. Guess who upped sticks and joined the last daughter to keep her company on a table for two? And guess who got left on his own when she joined the rest of the family…
We’re home now. I’m about to load the washing machine. I have no doubt it will make it rain.
I’m still smiling though.
In other news, I need to go for a run at some point over the weekend. I have to keep the miles up ahead of the idiotic challenge I’ve set myself for September. Wish my luck!