The wedding
It's not very often you marry off one of your sons. This is a personal post about the marriage of our eldest, James to our new daughter Sarah.
To London and still no sign of Dick…
Suzy and I love London and would probably have lived there, or New York, if we had been together 30 years ago. Of course, if either of us had made any other choices than we actually made, this trip would never have happened unless you believe (as we do) in the concept of an infinite number of parallel universes where all possible scenarios will happen. That fucks with your head eh…
When living in Germany, we attended our youngest son’s wedding in Steinbockenheim, near Frankfurt. Christina is German and met Joe when living in the UK. At the wedding, Christina announced she was pregnant, and now our Granddaughter Emma is coming up to five.
Our firstborn James announced he was getting married in the Spring of last year following a whirlwind romance with his now-wife Sarah, who proposed to him. Cool.
The wedding singer
Unless you are a dedicated wedding band the thought of playing weddings fills any original artist with fear—it’s a specialist gig.
We were asked to play in the evening at Christina and Joe’s wedding celebrations and did a whole original set for a group of mainly German guests.
By the time we hit the stage after a very long day, we were well-oiled. Still, we seemed to get away with it and had a truly wonderful time.
Sarah and James asked us to play at their wedding but this time it was just one song during the ceremony—to accompany the bride as she walked into the chapel. We soon discovered that the guest list was peppered with pro musicians, which combined with the fact you can’t fuck up the bride’s entry at our son’s wedding, made a stressful situation.
The song they chose was Bob Dylan’s Girl From The North Country. We researched the track and found that nobody had covered the song satisfactorily and after studying it - found out why. Dylan was at his most obtuse at the time where he extended verses and sang difficult lyrics over cross-rhythms. Also, every live version we found was different from the next.
To add to the stress I needed to borrow a guitar. Fortunately, this wasn’t too much of a problem as James has a beautiful Taylor acoustic guitar following a swap we did several years ago. Long story.
A we were flying in, Suzy had a different problem as procuring a bass and amplifier was going to be very tricky, so she chose to play harmonica and we feverishly rehearsed a dual harmony version.
So that’s the back story.
London is fucking expensive
Flying is the only sensible option when travelling to London from Portugal and we had to leave our four Labradors in the Pet Hotel. In May, Françoise and Edith—aka the squeakers—joined our family and it was the first time we had left them. Even when we are on tour, we usually travel as a family pack so it was difficult to leave them, albeit in excellent hands at Hotel Canino da Quinta de Santa Maria.
Reasonably priced accommodation in London is difficult to find and we were delighted when two of our friends and top supporters offered us their flat, which is located near Oval, for the duration of our stay. Fabulous!
We decided to travel on Wednesday leaving the Van Of Rock at 0500 at a JetPark close to Humberto Delgado Airport in Lisbon. The flight was pretty seamless arriving at Gatwick bang on schedule and then took the 45-minute journey on the Gatwick Express to London Victoria Station then onto Oval. We hadn’t eaten and decided to drop our cases at the flat and find a local restaurant for lunch. It was around 1230.
We walked down Brixton Road and happened upon Conuco, an establishment serving Venezuelan street food and opted for their most popular dish, Arepas - totally delicious!
Cafe Oto
In the evening we visited Sarah and Jim’s flat in Stoke Newington and headed off to to Cafe Oto in Dalson to see a celebration of the music of drummer and founder of the Spontaneous Music Ensemble—John Stevens. We were pretty fucked having arisen so early and experienced a talk by David Toop followed by a challenging evening of music with Scottish free-jazz and improvising vocalist Maggie Nichols, also of the Ensemble, saxophonist John Butcher and others.
After the event, we returned to the flat to pick up the guitar as Dalston is not a place to be walking around late at night with a valuable instrument.
We ended up drinking and chatting until 0400 and took an UBER back to our temporary home in Oval late. A 24-hour day.
Everything we bought was three to four times more than in Portugal. London is fucking expensive.
The family
We met Sarah for the first time in Valencia, Spain. The four of us were supposed to see our favourite band The Smile but sadly they cancelled due to Johnny Greenwood’s mystery illness.
On a positive note, we all got on like a house on fire and shared many stories my favourite being Sarah—a self-confessed Witch—who was almost expelled from school for attempting to summon the Devil.
On Thursday night there was a dinner at the Lady Mildmay with all the family, most of who we hadn’t met and had a great time but slightly soured as our Granddaughter Emma wasn’t allowed in the restaurant after 1900 and Christina had to take her back. Ridiculous. Welcome to UK licencing laws.
Friday 13th
Yes, the wedding was on this most superstitiously unlucky day in the Gregorian calendar
Following a final music rehearsal at the flat in Oval, we made our way by UBER complete with guitar and harmonica to The Auld Shillelagh in Stoke Newington which is, according to the Irish Times, “The Most authentic Irish pub in the world outside Ireland". Guinness was consumed and we chatted with the arriving guests many of which were James’ old school friends which I hadn’t seen for 18 years. Fabulous catching up. They were all grown-up men and women now…
In the meantime, the bride was getting ready helped by her mother Sally and sisters Emily and Grace.
Charlotte Macke Photography
As we were merrily sipping on our Guinness, a sparkly-eyed woman dressed in black arrived, she gave a smile and then whipped her camera out and proceeded to take photographs of the pre-wedding gathering.
Charlotte is a London and Paris-based photographer and to our delight, discovered that she was shooting the entire wedding on film—a real analogue passion of ours. We introduced ourselves and said hello.
With a great photographer on board, we felt liberated to immerse ourselves in the joy of the day and savour every precious moment. Something that all who visit a Nick Cave concert will appreciate.
She drifted effortlessly between the groups of friends looking for special moments to capture and when shooting on film you have to be more intuitive and selective about the shots you take as each roll of 35mm film affords you 36-38 photographs.
Nothing was posed. We love the relaxed naturalness of the people—the laughter, the joy— and certainly captured memories of those special moments on film for us all to treasure and enjoy forever.
Below is a selection of photographs from the day, used with kind permission from Charlotte.
The bride
The Ceremony
The time was upon us and we ambled over to Abney Chapel—the oldest surviving non-denominational chapel in Europe. Guests were arriving and tuned up. To say I was nervous is an understatement. Give me a crowd of 20,000 any day.
We met David O’Leary who until recently was a member of the London Philharmonic Orchestra and was playing solo violin after the civil ceremony. Cool guy. Great suit. Great player.
Walk the walk
The plan was for the whole congregation to walk a couple of miles from the Chapel to the Myddleton Arms where the reception was to take place. Beer was to be distributed along the way and have to say it was a most enjoyable experience. Of course, the whole party strung out along the route, some of whom called in for a cheeky pint.
The celebration
We arrived at the Myddleton Arms to be greeted by a group of friends shucking oysters and doling out Champagne. The eclectic and diverse group of guests were a joy to be with and with a free bar, it started to get messy very quickly and at stupid o’clock, the landlord literally had to throw us out the door.
Naturally, we were one of the last to leave but some intrepid souls wandered off to a local club. We opted to take an UBER home.
A wonderful day.
Black & White
The end of a beautiful day and the start of a beautiful life
Beautiful photos and descriptions of your trip.