It all comes round again...
Apr. 5th, 2012 07:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shewhomustThirty-five years ago, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler and I visited the States for the first time. We'd never been before, never thought of it as somewhere we would want to go - but my father was getting married, so there we were.
The wedding was at the bride's house on Long Island, an arangement which felt very foreign in those days before the English were permitted to choose their own wedding venues. The plan had been to hold the ceremony in the garden, but spring had failed to show up, and although the dogwoods were in bloom, the weather was grey and cold, so we stayed indoors. Afterwards we dashed through the rain to the home of the neighbours who hosted the reception.
That was on Apri 2nd, which must have been the Saturday. What did we do on the 5th? Had the bride and groom already flown off to their honeymoon in Mexico City, leaving us to be tourists in New York City and up into New Enland? I don't remember. I remember a Friday which was both Good Friday and the first night of Passover, and people driving off very sedately because there was a bucket full of chicken soup in the car; and I remember celebrating my birthday later in our stay with dinner and cocktails in Chinatown; and I remember what I gave Tom for his birthday (need you ask? it was a book - a nice litle copy of Aesop's Fables with the Bewick ilusrations) but I don't remember whether we celebrated his birthday on the day, which is today, or later on their return.
Thirty-five years on, I do think of the US as somewhere I want to go, but I probably wouldn't be braving the enhanced security regime if I hadn't been invited to another wedding.
So we took the train to Manchester airport, the sun shining on the mill towns of the high Pennines, the canal below and the snow powdering the slopes above. The merest taster of the rail journey to come, but we're on our way.
durham_rambler and I visited the States for the first time. We'd never been before, never thought of it as somewhere we would want to go - but my father was getting married, so there we were.The wedding was at the bride's house on Long Island, an arangement which felt very foreign in those days before the English were permitted to choose their own wedding venues. The plan had been to hold the ceremony in the garden, but spring had failed to show up, and although the dogwoods were in bloom, the weather was grey and cold, so we stayed indoors. Afterwards we dashed through the rain to the home of the neighbours who hosted the reception.
That was on Apri 2nd, which must have been the Saturday. What did we do on the 5th? Had the bride and groom already flown off to their honeymoon in Mexico City, leaving us to be tourists in New York City and up into New Enland? I don't remember. I remember a Friday which was both Good Friday and the first night of Passover, and people driving off very sedately because there was a bucket full of chicken soup in the car; and I remember celebrating my birthday later in our stay with dinner and cocktails in Chinatown; and I remember what I gave Tom for his birthday (need you ask? it was a book - a nice litle copy of Aesop's Fables with the Bewick ilusrations) but I don't remember whether we celebrated his birthday on the day, which is today, or later on their return.
Thirty-five years on, I do think of the US as somewhere I want to go, but I probably wouldn't be braving the enhanced security regime if I hadn't been invited to another wedding.
So we took the train to Manchester airport, the sun shining on the mill towns of the high Pennines, the canal below and the snow powdering the slopes above. The merest taster of the rail journey to come, but we're on our way.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2012-04-05 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-05 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-05 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-05 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-07 12:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-06 01:04 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-07 12:08 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-07 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-04-08 05:47 am (UTC)Hope your travels are good ones!
no subject
Date: 2012-04-10 03:45 pm (UTC)And thanks - trsvelling (and arriving) going well so far!