2019 was a year of weddings: four, in fact. Weddings come in waves: the first rush straight after university, then a steady trickle through one’s twenties. It had more or less dried up for us by last year, but this year there were plenty. Some had been a long time coming – no nine years from engagement to wedding, in one case. Each was a very good day.
I identified my cousin Nick’s wedding day as the best day of 2019 when I was flicking back through my diary last night. It sticks in my memory as a long, sunlit, summer day that faded into an evening lit by twinkling lights strung around the garden. I remember sitting around drinking Pimms and lemonade under a shady tree. Trying to dance on a lawn that tilted towards the sea at an angle of about fifteen degrees (and the Gay Gordons is confusing enough on the level). The family, including partners, gathered together for the first time ever. Singing along with the band. A plentiful and eclectic selection of food. Guests from all over the world. My parents agreeing what a nice wedding it was.
(It made the front page of the Isle of Wight County Press (‘an Island man married his boyfriend from India’), which is a) hilarious; and b) something that I would never have imagined when I was a teenager, growing up under the shadow of Section 28.)
Kathleen Jowitt 