It turns out that I'm not really all that good at this updating my blog malarkey. No post since August you say? Ah well, nothing interesting happened anyway. Honest.
This evening I'm being a bit retrospective and a bit whimsical. Partially this is due to a long train and coach journey home, partially due to drinking far too much chianti last night. But mostly it's to do with the reasons why I've been travelling around the country on slow trains and Arriva buses and why I've been trying to drown myself in lovely red wine.
I've just returned from the wedding of M, Rosie's Godmother, who I've known almost as long as I've known Ella. We became friends in a dark part of my life, I don't mind admitting as much, and seem to have stayed like that ever since. She's been in my life at the important stages- our wedding, Rosie- and put us up (or put up with us, one of the two...) across Europe throughout the years. I'd like to think the feeling's mutual, but I wouldn't dream of being so egotistical.
It was a wonderful day, truly wonderful, and it was a genuine honour to be invited to share it with her and her new husband and their families. What made it even better was being invited to share it with lots of other mutual friends, people that we never see very often because they are scattered to the four winds.
I always feel that weddings are as much about gratitude for the past- for the relationships that get you to where you are now- as they are about optimism for the future. And this event was no different for me at all. We have friends through M and M has friends through us, that much is a fact, and it was lovely to be in the same room as all the people. It happens so rarely, there were people at the wedding that I have not seen for eight or nine years. The best bit was picking up the conversation as though there'd been no gap at all. It was delightful to curl up in the corner with a bottle of red and reminisce- who knows who from where, how on earth our lives crossed, and gosh, just how grown up aren't we all?
Many of the people I'm friends with in this group are "internet friends" from long before it was fashionable or common to have friends through email, from long before Facebook or Twitter. Until very recently I wouldn't have dared admit that, lest I'd be seen as a complete freak. In a lot of ways there hasn't been a gap in the conversation, through blogging and emails and everything that goes with it, we know as much (if not more) about each other than if we lived on the next street to each other. I think it's genuinely amazing to have these relationships with these fantastic people, people I'd never have normally met, and it's genuinely amazing to see where life's taken us all. These are people I've known since I was 17 or 18, when did we all get grown up?
It's just a fantastic feeling to be in a big room full of friends, getting loudly drunk and dancing. A ceilidh band and a bottle of wine always helps. I've come back with a real buzz and it wasn't even my big day, though I've been moved to dig out the photos of our big day all those years ago and see the same (younger) faces smiling back.
I suppose all I can say is that days and weekends like this make me appreciate what I have, they make me reminisce about where I've come from, and they make me grateful that people want to share this with me. I've been married to Ella for over six and a half years now, with a beautiful and intelligent and belligerent daughter in tow, and weddings make me so glad I have this. They make me glad and I can only hope the married couple share the same joy I've had in married life.
