A year today

In Memory of Mark McCann

Through diamond eyes they skim the skies
and touch the dancing trees
where fireflies meet, from lamplit street
to deep eternal seas.
They chart the lost lands of the west
Where Tir-Nan-Og awaits the best
And our old friend shall find his rest,
Laughing along the breeze!
Fortunate as you please!

And nod to old Odysseus there
Upon his travels set
From Ithaca to Ithaca
Time fading his regret
Byzantium, the golden port
of mysteries, now found, long sought
and secrets with adventures taught,
Phoenix singing yet!
Poets do not forget!

To Hesperides where whistling winds
Will open sweet the gate
Where voyagers end and begin
And Time itself shall wait,
Till once again your eyes grow young,
And through the legends you will run
Into the palace of the sun
Kissing your old nurse, Fate!

XXXX

The Spanish Wedding

Removing myself from the pitiful and painful, I go to the joyfully absurd. Granada was reaching baking point last weekend, forty-one degrees on the streets. July will be interesting.

 I was unhappy because of the referendum, and my mood reached fret-overload just as the wedding started. The plan had been for my mother to pick up my brother and his boyfriend by taxi and then to meet us at the chapel. We got there, they turned up just before the start of the service, and my mother was nowhere to be seen. They had waited as long as they could,she hadn't appeared so they had had to make their way. I was on the verge of blistering my brother's ears when he told me, but the wedding started so I couldn't embarrass myself by freaking out.  Half way through proceedings my mother turned up wearing a gold/champagne thai silk jacket, a long black skirt that fishtailed out at the bottom, three ropes of different shaded pearls (including gold) around her neck and a pearl bracelet.  She was, to quote my brother, ' Best looking person in the room!'  She modestly hid herself in the side chapel, with the result that comments like 'What, this?... This old thing? Oh you know, I just threw it together...' were kept for afterwards when people clustered around her in states of pure wow. I wanted to tell her off, but she just looked at me despairingly. 'I know!' She said,  'What could I do? The sun and the radio let me down...' I had to subside, laughing at our perfect diva. Sun, radio, learn your lessons and do better next time.

A lovely wedding, a lovely couple! On then, to the reception, held in an old Spanish manor house that was once owned by Queen Joanna the Mad, and was later gifted to Wellington in thanks for chasing Boney out of Spain. It's a good drive out of Granada into the countryside, and my heart, heavy with the news of the past few days began to lift at all the joy, and  the sight of sunset on the mountains, beautiful,uncompromising. That is why I love them.

There  was food, much much food. There was dancing. There was wedding envy on my part; the bride and groom had laid on extra wee things, a signing book full of beautiful photos of them, a wooden frame into which you chucked little hearts on which you had written messages, a photo booth, a candy stall... we seem austere by comparison. And yet I am content :-) Of all these things, none make me think particularly of us. We'll be OK.

Next day, my brother, his boyfriend, my partner my mother and I decided to have a sort of mini- breakfast before going to join the family.  We walked into  a bar only to find them all there in full on eat mode. There were endless tapas and beers before the decision was made to go back to the house  and join a  couple of our number who were missing the fun. Naturally we stopped by a restaurant on the way for more beers and tapas. The whole weekend has been a digestive bewilderment. I may or may not look like a barrel at this moment in time, I certainly feel like one.

And then I come back... and have problems dealing with what I find.

The Thirteen Coins, or, The Family Idiot

I did wonder what all the fuss was about.

During the celebrations, my aunt gave me a couple of silver(possibly plated) boxes to stick in my handbag. I assumed they had been used for keeping the rings in, but that was OK, I gave them to one of my cousins later, and that was that.

These boxes turned up in coversation again and again. Seemed that they have been lost, my cousin doesn't seem to recall me giving them to her... I don't know. I was tipsy but not so very tipsy I hope,that my mind made things up. I worried... were they antiques? Why was everyone asking about them over and over again?

I just got asked by another cousin if the coins inside the boxes had fallen into my bag. Coins? What coins? I thought they were empty.

Still, I just looked in my bag, and there were 13 of these bizarre coins, each depicting some event from the Bible. Turns out that the giving of  coins, usually gold or silver from groom to bride is a  Spanish custom. The coins are blessed by the priest, and symbolise the groom's promise to be a good provider, and the bride's promise to trust him. Or they have something to do with the 12 apostles and Christ, or 12 months of the year and the poor,or something. The tradition seems to stem from Visigothic or Frankish or Roman antecedents, I have no clue, but it's pretty ancient, supposedly dating from the 6th or 3rd century... Thankfully the coins were not that old. They were, however, a gift from my grandmother to my aunt, who in turn gave them to all her children to use in their weddings. God alone knows where my grandmother got them. For all I know, she might have been given them by her mother.  One thing is certain  - they are a treasured family heirloom, and I was entrusted with them completely unknowingly. My aunt has been tearing her hair out, and yet no-one thought to mention anything to me until this morning. I  just assumed the whole family had developed an obsession with boxes.

I think we've all been very lucky. From pounds to euros, with added Namibian and Ozzie currency, there are so many bits of random coinage free-floating in my bag I could very well have tried to use these things to pay taxi drivers or tip waiters.

 It's been a funny old week.

Edited to add: And now the boxes have been found - the Bride's mother had them. 

The most accurate summary of Today in Politics

Finally laughing!

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alanwhite/and-i-heard-as-it-were-the-noise-of-thunder?utm_term=.iyd0X5wJg#.kbK7wGDOb