English wedding with international guests

Hardly surprising, the international component, since our beloved Juliette and Rory, as respectively aid project manager and one-time Guardian Middle East correspondent, lived together in places like Islamabad, Baghdad, Beirut and Jerusalem (guess which one we haven't visited). The wedding guests last Saturday came from various parts of the UK but also from Ireland, Belgium, France (I got an early flight from Bordeaux), Thailand, Sicily, Morocco, Cyprus, Jordan, Oman, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Kabul, Pakistan, Mali, Mogadishu, Washington, New York and Australia.

It all took place, after their first 17 glorious years together, in Julie's home village of Blewbury, Oxfordshire, where her wonderful mother still lives, and you don't get much more English than that. The above photo captures the spontaneous spirit of the day; mine below is simply there to show you more of the church between the showers.

Despite delicious kinks in the wedding service, the afternoon and evening travelled smoothly along expected lines, including a wedding banquet in a marquee on the home lawn and speeches from Rory, Julie (this, at least, is a recent departure - the lady does not remain silent) and Best Man. The dancing, too, was initiated by the bride and groom; we joined in the Arabic numbers. No-one there, I hope, would have been shocked to see two men dancing together the way we did, but I DID think that the table labels ('Lancelot and Guinevere', 'Tristan and Isolde', 'Layla and Majnun' - that's an Azeri couple) should at least have run to one like 'Hadrian and Antinous'. Well, we same-sex marrieds were in a small minority. Anyway, here's my conventional cake-cutting shot, and they are indeed a beautiful couple.

We wouldn't know our extraordinary friend Sophie, nor visited her mud hotel in Djenne, if we hadn't met Juliette first, nearly 25 years ago. Julie told us her 'goddaughter' (yes, really) needed cheering up in London and we took her to a lousy play about the Holocaust in the basement of our local pub. It was so bad we actually laughed a lot and bonded instantly.

We also wouldn't know Juliette if our passports hadn't been stolen while we spent a night in an airport hotel in Damascus before supposedly flying on to San'a (a city I guess we won't see now). After 10 hours in an airport holding-space, we were finally rescued by Peter Noon, British Consul, who took us to HQ where we saw a polaroid of then recently-released Terry Waite on the wall and got our temporary passports, after which they were duly stamped, and stamped again when we revised our travel plans and took a service taxi to Amman in Jordan and on to Petra before travelling back to Damascus (more visa shenanigans).

Before that, our extended stay in Syria, which I can't regret for any reason - we had intended to spend four days there on the way back - meant that we spent New Year's Eve and Day in Palmyra

and went to the crusader castle of Krac des Chevaliers on quite a different day than the one envisaged in our original plans. And there, in the pouring rain, I saw three figures emerge on another tower and serendipitously snapped them before a word had been exchanged.

These were Juliette (centre), Nick her travelling companion (right) - Rory was some years in the future for her then - and their guide (left). She shouted 'Are you English?' and 'Why are you carrying that music case?' (I was also wearing tweed, as we did on our travels in those days). Meeting them at the main gate, J thought she was 'a bit braying', but we bumped into each other again in Damascus, had supper together and the rest is history (even weirder is the fact that our dear friend Cally had told Nick, who was her landlord at the time, that he would probably meet us at Crac). Along with our Viennese friends Tommi and Martha, whom we met during a six-hour delay to our flight from Cairo to Asmara and with whom we subsequently travelled a bit around Eritrea, Juliette and hence Rory are the real abiding friends we've made from our travels. Very loving and loyal ones, too. Here's to their next decades together.

Because we could

That's the answer to the question 'why get married when you're already civilly partnered and you've essentially been married for 27 years?' It's a question of everything being fair and equal at last, of more rights, practically speaking. In an iconoclastic moment, the 'habibi' - which we agreed would be as close to the rather proprietorial title 'husband' as we're going to get - gave his permission for one facial shot on the blog, chosen by him. So I waive the objection that I'm not at my jolliest-looking - I assure you I was extremely jolly throughout - and not wearing my garland, one of two woven out of  favourite flowers, peonies and cornflowers, by our delightful Swedish friend Pia (on the right below) and presented by her as a complete surprise during our wedding tea party at the Garden Museum.

This is me on the day, 15 June, speaking about how glad we were to follow so serendipitously in the wake of the people's choice in Ireland ('a sad day for humanity,' according to a Catholic cardinal, a jubilant one for the majority).

I also wanted to draw our friends Claire and Howard, 18 years together, into the picture. Some weeks back, Claire and I were having a deliriously topsy-turvy time at the all-male Pirates of Penzance on its Richmond leg. She asked why we were buying into the marriage thing, said she'd always been dead against it but that a lawyer had suggested that for the sake of the legal aspect, with special regard to their two children, she and H probably should. My 'no big deal' line clinched it and they announced their banns on the same day as we got our certificate. Which meant returning to Camden Town Hall and finding, from our very delightful and warm registrar, that the form-creating might take 45 minutes on top of an extended wait. So she said she'd do most of the paperwork and post the certificate so we could get off to the party. The odious Mr Panz - featured here in the days when I called him Pantz - had promised to behave himself, though he took a chance for a nap during registration

and was generally soothed by one of his family, bridesmaid and youngest goddaughter Mirabel (she, mother Edwina and Panz were the only attendees up in Camden). Here she is admiring five of the seven princess cakes from Bagariet, the superb Swedish Bakery in the West End, which went with the champagne for the party

after which about 15 of us went on to Gypsy - me for the second time, Ma, J and goddaughter Rosie May among the rest for the first. And who could not love it? I'm so glad and proud that Ma, 84, made it up from Banstead for the tea party and the show, which was just her thing (a thousand thanks to Liz, her valiant driver and friend). I reckon Imelda Staunton, who's not missed a show so far, has added stuff to "Rose's Turn". We agreed that the ensemble is uniformly excellent.

Broadway no doubt lit the lights and hit the heights for the big American victory after the Supreme Court decided, rather surprisingly, in favour of same-sex marriages across the States. We feel privileged to have sandwiched our afternoon coincidentally between the Irish and American victories. Best of blogging friends Susan Scheid, a recently retired New York lawyer, celebrated (with the proviso that the law has been way too slow to catch up with the way we live our lives) and provided a link to the document here. Obama has been on a natural crest of a wave recently, too, handling a heckler at the White House's Pride Month party, speaking eloquently about the judgment and leading 'Amazing Grace' to commemorate the Charleston Christians massacred by a would-be White Supremacist.

Another thing I heard which moved me to smile through tears was a group of friends and colleagues of the late Reverend Clementa Pinckney on the BBC World Service, remembering him with laughter and affection as remarkable senator as well as good religious pastor, proving by their very testaments how 'alive' he still is. Oh, and let's not forget Charlotte Church's amazingly good speech at the End Austerity Now demonstration march (which I couldn't attend because we were still basking in Sicilian food, footpaths, sun and sea). There's an awful lot of good in this struggling world, despite the daily chronicles of suicide bombings, persecution of gays in countries less fortunate than ours, Putin's dangerous lies and IS pathology.

29/6 Another reason to be cheerful, even as the Greek state totters. Courtesy of Greenpeace:

Fulham wedding walk

More nuptials, this time taking us from the westernmost shores of Connemara to the steps of Fulham Town Hall, strewn here post-ceremony with rice and rosepetals (incidentally Henry James called our neck of the woods 'the western wastes', and although cachet was implied when the Victorian developers renamed it 'West Kensington', it's really North Fulham). Hélène and Olivier were married in the rather splendid council chamber, the mostly French guests amusingly looked down upon by portraits of local worthies and George V as well as a well-executed set of Anglo-historical stained glass windows ranging from Alfred the Great to the Fulham potteries (est. 1672). The groom's brother, a harpist with the French National Radio Orchestra, spun silk around the waiting group. This is where the banns for our own civil partnership were posted, but since we wanted to be among the first to be legal in the UK, we actually signed up in Camden. There were at least as many gay guests as straight at this one.

The promenade made us see the route in a new light.


I've never been that fond of the North End Road market, where you can't pick your own fruit, or couldn't the last time I tried, but it's improving, with a good falafel stand and an excellent French deli van on Fridays and Saturdays for the (us) BoBos*. The Iranian/Iraqi shops are good for supplying my handful of signature dishes.


Crossing between the bed and pawn shops, the nuptial cortege entered our enclave with its cruelly pollarded London planes and central gardens unvisited by non-residents, thanks to factional self-interests, during London Squares Open-Day Weekend


and wound up at the Pear Tree Pub just by Charing Cross Hospital.


The larger institution is all too well known to us, but the pub was not; I'll certainly breakfast and lunch there now.

*bohemian bourgeoisie