Wedding Fever

In times gone by, there were but two choices of wedding venue in the UK. The God fearing opted for a Church and for the rest, unless you lived near the fantastic Chelsea registry office, you had to traipse to the local town hall and sit on orange plastic chairs awaiting a 20 minute slot with a sour-faced civil servant.

Not any more! For the last twenty years or so, despite the 120,000 divorces each year, 400,000 happy British hopefuls clamour to pledge their troths in splendid surroundings. The UK boasts a fine array of approved wedding venues, ranging from stately homes, via pubs to pods on the London Eye.

Frequenting a hotel the other week, my friend and I noticed that the front wall was bedecked with a festive banner announcing ‘Wedding for a Grand’. Being poetic souls, we suggested to the manager that ‘Take her hand for a grand’ might be a catchier slogan. He wasn’t impressed. A hotel manager’s health and safety worries coupled with a coach load of pensioners staggering up the steps for lunch, trumped our fascination with literary hoardings. Never mind, we concluded, with an average ‘wedding day’ costing £13,000, it sounded like a bargain, notwithstanding the lack of literary finesse.

 

With our minds on matters matrimonial, we ventured into the city. There was no shortage at all of festivity to witness. Within the space of an hour, we counted no fewer than four troth-pledgings. We categorised each according to its most striking characteristics. First was the ‘fascinating wedding’. Every lady spilling onto the pavement from the matrimonial hostelry had emulated Sam-Cam’s remarkably fascinating royal wedding headgear. Then there was the ‘orange wedding’. Bereft of marching Rangers supporters but packed with the tango-coloured tanned, it was a sight to behold. Next there was the 'kilt wedding'. We lingered there for quite some time to survey the Scottish delights on offer.   
 
When we returned, a little light headed, to the hotel in the early evening, the disco was in full swing. Gone however was the ‘Wedding for a Grand’ banner.
       ‘That’s great,’ remarked my friend, ‘he’s going to change it to “take her hand for a grand,” like we recommended, after all.’
The manager was quick to intervene and quash our hopes.
        ‘We always take it down when the wedding party arrives,’ he pointed out, ‘people don’t want their guests thinking they’ve sold them short.’   

 

All creatures great and small

It all started a week ago. Wonder husband (WH) and I decided the time had come to get fit and loose a smidgen of cake-belly apiece. What better, we concluded, than a gentle cycle around the (flat) local area to take a look at some of the beautiful sixteenth century churches, all within a manageable three or four miles of our cottage.

As our knees and thighs buckled last Saturday under the (unaccustomed) exertion, our hearts and minds were lifted by the bounty of spiritual history on offer. Our very favourite, we concluded, was the small church at Aughton which boasts a packed programme of services, teas and events. A week ago therefore, this afternoon’s event, the blessing of the pets, was inked into today’s diary. 

Many are called but few are chosen

We decided last Saturday that to endeavour to take more than two four legged friends into church this afternoon would be to court disaster.  We have seven pets chez nous so some rigorous narrowing of the field was needed. The week was spent conducting interviews and assessments against a carefully selected list of criteria; ability to stay quiet for an hour, confidence in the presence of chanting black-cloaked persons (of the clergy), control of toilet functions, to name but three.

The two strongest performers (averaged across all assessment categories) were chosen. At lunchtime today, we set off in the company of my sibling (who has not graced the inside of a church for many a year), together with her own two four legged friends. 

As we exited our cars, the heavens opened, together with the bowels of fifty percent of our selected contingent of animals. Plastic poop-bags filled and hidden in the hedge, we hastened to our pews to be aghast at the number of fellow attendees. There were dogs of a medley of provenances, a rabbit, one cat (ours) and humans of all ages, shapes and sizes. The excellent lady celebrant blessed every four legged friend individually (a good job we included confidence in the face of black-cloakery among our criteria).

To my delight, the final hymn was ‘All things Bright and Beautiful’ which WH and I sang so lustily that we received a dig in the ribs from my sibling. After the service there were biscuits aplenty (for the animals) and gallons of tea for the humans. On the way back to the car, overburdened with biscuits, the remaining fifty percent of our four legged contingent had call for the poop-bags just as the heavens opened again.

Back home, drenched and awash with tea, sibling, WH and I concluded that only in England would the populace be so bonkers as we. We wouldn’t have it any other way! 

http://www.aughtonchurch.co.uk/moment.htm 

Rosettes, Balloons and Rousing Slogans

After several years abroad, I yearn to feast again on Britain’s beautiful places. Last week, I headed to Lincoln, a compact, cobbled cathedral town and among the most beautiful British places indeed. Needing plenty of time to enjoy the many goodies on offer (cathedral, interesting shops, antiques, cream teas, St George’s Day parade, castle, old friends, stately homes, history, home made fudge etc etc), I booked into one of the small independent hotels which Britain does so well. www.thelincolnhotel.com

During my recent forays abroad, I must confess to having lost track not only of beautiful Britain but also of what is going on in the jolly blue, red and yellow world of British politics. Neither the Middle East nor Africa are sufficiently interested in our playground squabbles to devote airtime or column inches to British parliamentary affairs. 

While overseas, I did overhear that we now enjoy the stewardship of not one but two fresh faced leaders, one blue and one yellow, and that both are old Etonians. I heard tell of fiddling and pocket lining which has (obviously) been ongoing for years and has latterly been the subject of gentle hand wringing. I was also bombarded by so many pictures of Jimmy Saville that I felt moved to pretend that I wasn’t British at all on many occasions!

How delighted was I last week when I entered said hotel in Lincoln and headed towards my cathedral view room (oooh) to find the reception area infused by a Royal Blue mist from which upper-class cadences and Crabtree and Evelyn floral scents wafted. This would be a golden opportunity to take a crash course in the updated priorities, values and objectives of the jolly old Tory party, I concluded.

My exit from the lift was hampered by a throng of blue suited persons festooned in rosettes, smiling and milling. Several clutched large sheaves of leaflets which would surely contain all the information I needed to bring myself back up to speed in no time at all.

As I approached the multitude, it became clear that I, the potential voter, was at the very underside of the Tory party priorities on that particular day. To a man, they were preoccupied with far more important matters. All talk was of photographs, lighting, film crews and forehead glare. My request for a leaflet was met with derisory disbelief. Undaunted, I battled through clusters of blue balloons and yet more rosettes to the front of the mêlée.

An enormous hoarding bearing the words ‘Securing Britain’s Future’ (or something similarly rousing) was parked outside the hotel with the aforementioned cathedral looming buttressed and beautiful behind. Someone whom I concluded must be a minor cabinet minister, both in stature and seniority, yet with not a hint of forehead glare, was posing with the cream of his rosetted cronies in front of the hoarding.

The chosen were having their photographs taken to the adoring ‘oooohs and aaaahs’ of the blue multitude. By now, the vast majority of the leaflets had been discarded on the tables in the reception. I watched the bizarre spectacle for a while before wandering unnoticed away bearing a pile of the discarded leaflets to review at my leisure.  

If indeed I had harboured any suspicion that the Tory party were equipped with whatever is required to ‘Secure Britain’s Future’ when I arrived; by the time I reached my room, any such suspicion had been well and truly sequestered.  I resolve to see what the other lot, the red ones, have to offer. While abroad I did actually hear that that they too are preoccupied at the moment. In the case of the reds, I understand the current priority is brotherly barneying rather than the blue predilection for preening and portraiture.

 

 https://www.facebook.com/clara.challoner.walker

 

Happy days in the shadow of the reformation

This week marked the return of Wonder Husband (WH) and me to ‘God’s own county’. For friends abroad, I’m talking about Yorkshire, in the North of England. For great friends in Scotland (you know who you are), Scotland is a country not a county; it is indeed God’s own however, I agree with you!

As is the wont of many embarking upon a phase of life somewhere wonderful, WH and I resolved to ‘do all the nice things tourists do when they are here’. We had actually resided in Yorkshire for twenty years before living abroad in recent times. Our children grew up with impressive Yorkshire accents and deep local knowledge. Like so many before us however, we went to work, the supermarket, the doctor/dentist/vet but never found the time to engage with the wonders on our doorstep; a tragedy in God’s own county!

 

 

Within days, we are reversing our wasteful ways! We spent the weekend (both days) in the glorious city of York. I can safely say, there is no city more beautiful (I really should have realised that at some point during the twenty years when we lived here before).

The Shambles and  Stonegate sucked us back into sixteenth century with cobbled streets, ghostly tales, the world’s best tea rooms and a little red devil. The street performers, especially the chap with the glass balls, held us transfixed to a (Yorkshire)man.

The Palm Sunday service in the Minster, parts of which (beneath the current building) date back to Roman times, was incredible. Slow off the mark, following a sumptuous feast of local Yorkshire fare on Saturday evening, I allowed WH to progress my nomination for ‘official seat-saver’. The rest of our party of fellow worshipers followed the choral Palm Sunday procession through the streets.

When the procession, headed by a real donkey arrived at the minster, the congregation descended en masse, in need of respite. A seat-saver was the very last person the returning pilgrims wished to encounter. I had unchristian thoughts about WH, who had sponsored me for the Sisyphean seat-saving task. I was as welcome in the minster as were the Parliamentarians in 1644 yet fortunate that (on this occasion), my adversaries had no instruments of torture to hand! 

Author site   https://www.facebook.com/clara.challoner.walker

Swallows and surveillance

Living as we now do in the depths of rural France: in the words of Monty Python, we must ‘make our own entertainment’. Gone are the days when an enjoyable Saturday was spent brunching with jolly ex-pat chums and the other beautiful people at The Atlantis, Dubai or taking in a Broadway show!

 

The pinnacle of excitement this week was the early return of the migrating swallows to the village (see how creative we can be in the manufacture of entertainment when needs must). This followed record numbers of migrating cranes a few weeks ago, (can you stand all this entertainment?).

With such exciting tales to recount and a craving for social intercourse, I accosted one of my French friends outside the boulangerie. Hoping to impress, I explained the old English (I had assumed) saying ‘one swallow does not a summer make’.

As I stumbled over French tenses and genders, her features assumed an expression of disbelief. In the quest for a more favourable response, I embellished with a few more ‘old English’ summertime sayings; ‘ne’er cast a clout ‘till May is out’ and ‘if there’s enough blue sky to make a sailor’s trousers’, each to her abject bewilderment and mounting boredom.

When she was finally able to ‘get a word in edgewise’, she gently observed that she had learned the phrase ‘one swallow does not a summer make’ at school. Far from being an old English saying, she counselled, it was from the proverbs of Erasmus in the 16^th century. The true meaning, she explained is that ‘single data points cannot be relied upon to extrapolate a trend’.

Seeing my disappointment at having so disastrously failed to entertain, she offered to show me ‘swallow-cam’ to cheer me up. We entered her terraced cottage whence a complex array of surveillance equipment beamed a bird’s eye view of the soon to be nesting sparrows from her outbuilding to her sitting room. I was both entertained and impressed and I told her so. ‘Yes but the “hirondelles” are only entertaining for a few weeks a year,’ she shrugged. ‘The rest of the time, I use it to spy on my neighbours. You can see and hear everything.’ Her eyes widened as she emphasised the word ‘everything’ with a single raised eyebrow.

I resolve to be more inventive when ‘making entertainment’ in future. I will need to if I am to impress my French friends and neighbours in future bouts of social intercourse.

 

Author page

https://www.facebook.com/clara.challoner.walker 

Twenty four hour shopping and a sea of behinds

When I was a child, the world was unblemished by twenty four hour supermarkets. My mother procured our material needs at the small parade of establishments near our house. Every Sunday and on Public Holidays, shops were firmly shut. If we ran out of bread or eggs, begging from neighbours was our only option.  The reason for all this inconvenience? To give everyone time to go to church (we were told). Our local newsagent was allowed special dispensation on Sunday mornings as purveyor of essential reading matter*. Times have changed! Should we choose to do so, these days we can feed our consumer habit morning, noon and night, unfettered by religion. 

The five daily prayers

 

On arrival in the Middle East, I wondered how shop opening times would be impacted by the demands of Islamic observance. After all, one of the five big rules for Muslims is to pray five times every day.

I was reassured by my bank manager (the first Middle Eastern person I met) that in the UAE, shops stayed open late every day, even on a Friday. Uninitiated at that point, I responded ‘Great, we can all worship the god of commerce whenever we want.’ The bank manager shot me a withering glance and uttered a cutting, ‘That’s not what I mean’. Only later did I realise that rule number one of the five big rules is ‘There is only one God’. My careless reference to the possibility of multiple deities had been a faux pas of the highest order!

When I traversed from the UAE to work in Saudi Arabia, it was a different story. Time stood still for every one of the five prayers. In shopping malls, banks and restaurants, metal shutters descended, incarcerating incumbents for up to forty five minutes at a time. Shop assistants and waiters dashed (ostensibly) to the exclusively male prayer rooms and (interestingly) the smoking areas were full to overflowing.

 

The Islamic stance for prayer

Jolly Rubenesque indeed!

I never could fathom whether segregation of the sexes during prayer was to avoid distraction by the Rubenesque form or to save my blushes as gentlemen assumed a prayerful stance; nose and forehead touching the floor (and behind inevitably raised to compensate).  If it was the latter, they need not have worried. Within my first week in Saudi Arabia, I became immune to the sea of behinds as I endeavoured to creep, respectfully silent and without tripping, between the piles of carelessly discarded shoes strewn across the landing of the office during prayertime.

https://www.facebook.com/clara.challoner.walker

* Other more dubious reasons for his dispensation emerged in later years but that’s another story!

The mysterious tale of nikhab and the HMS Birkenhead

Until a few years ago, I had fondly believed that talking about the weather was an exclusively British pastime. It came as something of a surprise when I arrived in Saudi Arabia, to find that the Saudis enjoy a spot of weather-talk too. When I say a ‘spot’, I mean a large, precipitous blob.

Sandstorm outside the office

During my first few months, the sunshine was constant, heat unbearable and skies persistently blue. Conditions, it has to be said, which fostered little creativity in the weather-talk department. One morning however, while England would have been enjoying mellow fruitfulness, a sandstorm brewed outside the office window. I had a meeting that day in another office, about a 500 metre walk away. I set out. We British after all must sally forth without let or hindrance, particularly when to hop behind the wheel in Saudi would have attracted 50 lashes. My Saudi colleagues bid me farewell in the mode of Shackleton's relatives. For 24 hours after my foray, I experienced an odd crunchiness around the teeth, my eyes itched and I had to send every layer of clothing, from Abaya* fleshwards, to the (extortionate) hotel laundry from whence they never emerged.

Jeddah during flood

 

By February that year, talk in Saudi had turned to rain. For two years prior to my arrival, there had been floods around the building. Rain is a recent phenomenon in the Middle East, and the infrastructure has ignored its arrival. As we entered the danger period, iPhone pictures were circulated showing floating cars in the car park and swirling water where the steps should be. At the first sight of a puffy, white cloud, my colleagues would head for home.

Three men in a boat

While alone in the building after one such exodus, I had a poke around to see what I could find. In the basement, I found a boat. When I enquired, I was told that the boat was to evacuate the ladies. On further investigation, I discovered that the year before, the (few) ladies were stranded in the office overnight; so anxious were the men to save themselves that they nicked the boat.

Three ladies not in a boat

In that moment, it became clear why Middle Eastern men enshroud their women in impractical clothing, preventing both clear sight and free movement. It is to enable the men to run faster and secure 'first dibs' in emergency rescue situations! 

Luckily, no such nonsense in Europe where this year, we are all shocked by the devastation wrecked by unusual weather. We pray to Allah (or any other power, whom we find preferable) for the safety of all in its wake. 

*See To buy and Abaya - 2013

Paganism and Patisserie (or how to cure your gout)

This week, matters here in rural France turned towards the occult!

‘Do you know the fountain in the village?’ inquired the lady with whom I practice French conversation. I confirmed that I was familiar with the oddly Swiss looking, recently restored ‘lavoir’, bedecked with scarlet geraniums, which abuts the village car park. ‘It is one of the local examples of the cohabitation of paganism and Christianity in the area.’ she went on.

A wise and perceptive woman, she smelt curiosity and retrieved a learned tome, published 1954, on the very subject. A map therein marked literally hundreds of ‘pagan  healing springs’, all within a fifteen mile radius of our house. For each, the book helpfully named the gifted sage(s) in the relevant village empowered with the pagan credentials to effect cures. Paganism is a well organised business, no scattergun approach to curing the sick here! Each fountain covers a specific set of ills and cites dates and names of beneficiaries to quash the cries of the unbeliever.

Our local spring in Massignac is effective in ‘ridding children of fear’. Among a multitude of ills listed, several in the region specialise in incontinence, one in leprosy, a couple in casting out devils. Predictably, there is much call here, proximal to the Burgundy and Cognac regions as we are for amelioration of gout, no fewer than twenty springs claiming success.

 

As I made to leave, my hostess proffered generous portions of patisserie and pinot (a local sherry-like offering). I must make special note of those gout curing fountains in case of future need methinks. 

Novelty

As I bade a cheery farewell to my former Superbrand colleagues last December, many were kind enough to inquire what I was intending to ‘do’ during my Sabbatical. ‘Live in France, drink a lot of wine, burn my Blackberry and lie in every morning’ didn’t cut the corporate mustard. I invented a tale about ‘writing a novel’ as I sailed from the shores of the shareholder to my creative retreat. The former colleagues, technologists to a man, looked impressed! Unfortunately they have now started to inquire about progress.

I purchased a couple of smock-like garments, started to wear my hair down with a fresh, Bohemian rake, waited for inspiration and for words to miraculously appear on the page. Nothing happened. I challenged Amazon to find me in the depths of rural France, ordering a couple of ‘How to write a novel’ publications. They found me. I studied and to my surprise, sitting around pouting like Virginia Woolf or tripping the light fantastic a la Aldous H wasn’t going to do it. To write a novel, the tomes espoused, I needed objectives, a plan, an outline design, milestones and targets. It felt like time was moving backwards.

Two weeks ago, someone (kindly) offered to read the first draft. The pressure is on. I have managed to sling 25,000 words into my laptop (25% of a first draft will keep her busy for a while). Early mornings, late nights, daily milestones, technical challenges, have crept back into my life uninvited. I haven’t even had time to don my smocks, let alone pout!

Today I drove to the nearest town with shops sufficiently substantial to have heard of printer cartridges. After much internet activity, a young man handed over the cartridges bearing the exact number of my printer. In went the cartridges, swiftly followed by an error message. A time warp had sucked me into its vortex! Several hours later and with hair resembling Tina Turner rather than the fragrant JKR, I find that my printer, purchased in Abu Dhabi, needs special Middle Eastern cartridges! Presumably with Islamic, alcohol free ink! I won’t find any of them in France!

 

On the bright side, I have a bona fide excuse for my nascent editor. If I can get some cartridges shipped over, I will deliver on my milestone sometime next week …… Insha’Allah!!*

See ‘Smallprint in the Sunshine’ – October 2013

How to influence a nation!

Global rulers draw upon a range of approaches to encourage citizens to comply with their chosen direction. For example, in Saudi Arabia dissuading women drivers relies upon the meting out of a few lashes, in Pakistan, mountainous paperwork attesting to ‘medical need’ dissuades the would-be merry-maker from ordering a beer on room service. In the UK, the powerful encourage the unclean proletariat to ‘be more green’ by taxing them for every molecule of CO2 emitted.

In France, where WH and I are enjoying a few months repose, the authorities are promoting recycling among the populace. Specifically, recycling garden and kitchen waste to fertilise home grown vegetables and similar goodies. Would failure to compost mean a trip to the guillotine or a hefty cheque to the ‘tresor publique’? We duly contacted our ‘bons amis’, the local dustmen who agreed to sort us out.

 

Within days we were telephoned; someone would come that afternoon. I looked out the window for a gentleman of Worzel Gummage appearance bearing one of those two pronged forks which hang on the walls of rustic barns. At three on the dot, Madame Composte, with swingy chestnut hair and a smart navy suit, arrived in a nippy silver Citroen. With elegance and grace she extracted her fare from the boot and laid it on view. Two large composting bins, a reuseable bag of ‘starter’, numerous colourful books, brochures and leaflets.

With standards of professionalism and client focus of which the Apple Store would be proud, she launched into her pitch. She was a lady who knew her compost and spent a full 30 minutes explaining optimum temperature, oxygen levels, PH and microbes. We were converted, a pair of veritable composting advocates. Whatever was all this quality going to cost, we wondered?   ‘Everything is guaranteed.’ she said ‘We will return your 15Euro* deposit if you return the bins or we’ll replace them in seven years.’ She bade a charming farewell, handing over her business card bearing a 24 hour free helpline. We will rest easy knowing she is at hand should we face urgent composting queries in the middle of the night.

Now that’s a good way to get the citizens to do what you want!

*Less than $10

Wings of drifted snow, eyes of flame and a skeleton in the closet.

Having had our children early, wonder-husband (WH) and I have been prematurely excluded from that most emotional and enjoyable of events, the school nativity play. To overcome our withdrawal symptoms this year, we interrogated the offspring of relatives and friends to fill the void and garner some vicarious tear jerking to the (imagined) first, quivering lines of ‘Away in a manger’.

Having analysed the transcripts from several interrogations, WH and I can report that for those like our own offspring who never clutched at the stardom of virgin or her consort (who are the kids that get to be Mary and Joseph and what have their parents done to bag the roles?),  the angels are most coveted openings available and that among them, Gabriel of the drifted snowy wings, flaming eyes and a full four Basque nineteenth century verses of his own, the most coveted of all.

 

Wonderful flying buttresses!

We carried out parallel interrogations among the mothers; seasonal seamstresses who expressed a preference for, and some of whom exhaled with visible relief at having bagged for their progeny, a shepherd or a king …. a few rustic or regally coloured offcuts, something to carry (lamb or bling), a tea towel or paper crown; not too difficult to craft while quaffing the Bristol Cream and mince pies. Now when it came to Gabriel’s costumiers, we were in another league. Wings of drifted snow require engineering of equivalent visionary genius to Notre Dame’s flying buttresses with commensurate levels of stress. 

Hubert van Eyck - alter detail

To round off our investigations I did further research on the Angel Gabriel. Apparently ‘he’ is not a ‘he’ at all but is represented in numerous transcripts, icons and art as a woman …. ‘her wings of drifted snow, her eyes of flame etc etc’ …. Furthermore, she is not only a Christian messenger of the Annunciation and similar but also an important herald in the Islamic tradition, she who heralded in fact, to the prophet Mohammed the three defining aspects of Islam, Iman and Ihsan. … I need to now go and ponder how to break the news to my erstwhile friends in Saudi Arabia (see To buy and Abaya and In the twang of a G-string - Oct 2013) that Gabriel is a woman. With their patchy approach to gender inclusion, I am not sure they are going to be too pleased to hear from me again!!