WELCOME TO MY DAY..

IT IS NICE TO HAVE YOU SHARE IT WITH ME...

LEEDS....
Now in case you are wondering, I DID get lost on the way to the wedding....
Told the son I didn't want to drive it, and I knew lots of people were toing and froing between Leeds and Bradford so figured someone could pick us up as they passed by..
But son was quite determined we would DRIVE..and in THAT hirecar, and insisted that with daughter mapreading beside me, it would be "EASY"...
Course, he hadn't figured on daughter losing her contact case out of her backpack on the way back from London and being bat-blind...
. Or that she'd be so totally hungover that she could barely function, let alone navigate..
Or that I'd get lost on my way home from the hairdresser and already be cross and tense...
Or that it would be so wet and misty that all our carefully learned landmarks would be totally invisible......

Well..that was one nightmare trip.....
To cut a long story a bit shorter, we ended up in a market carpark from where we were going to walk to the Art Gallery where the ceremony was being held and beg them to let us dress there......but the market people wouldn't let us leave the car there more than an hour..and we were completely surrounded by a traffic jam..... .yet another road accident!
So daughter got out to call a taxi but surprised one just trying to leave the market...and we persuaded him to force a way through the traffic jam and lead us to the hotel where we were staying, and where next day's religious ceremony would be held..
Folks, I never thought meek and mild me would be edging a tiny Vauxhall Astra out and across lines of lorries and other assorted angry vehicles....but when one is twelve minutes away from being late for one's son's wedding, one does what one must!!
And when we reached the hotel, I figured on parking and unloading quickly, then racing through checkin and upstairs to dress...but a passerby said the guests usually parked in the street and that the car I'd be blocking was the manager's Mercedes which wasn't a good thing to do...
Now remember, this was SERIOUSLY wet, and I had a #40 hairdo, and I'd just been lost on wet roads for two and a half hours...
So I guess it was something in my face and tone of voice that made that kind Leedsman decide to help me park the car and get the luggage upstairs..
And when I finally made it inside I found daughter still bailed up a the desk..., fast checkin and out not being a feature of Hotel Dubrovnik in Leeds....(the checkout is ANOTHER story!)
And by the time we orienteered to our room and lurched inside we had 4 minutes to dress and find the Cartwright Hall Gallery....
"It's just at the end of the street..you can't miss it," said the manager.."Not worth taking the car..."
And since daughter flatly refused to ever get in that car beside me again, we set out to walk it...in the rain, in our good gear and my expensive hairdo..
And every passing car took good care to throughly splash us...

So we were LAST to the ceremony, and the son was already seated there in his new three piece grey-striped suit, looking like Shylock in modern dress....and that was the funny thing..the suit didn't look right on him any more...and the Muslim dress had looked right all week!!
And he said he'd been trying to call me but I hadn't been answering my phone..and then I realised what that tune was that had kept playing as we drove..son had reprogrammed my call alert and not told me.....
And the family were all decked out in the brightest of colours and the most exquisite embroideries, and the jewels and gold being worn would have made the Eritreans very happy indeed!
And daughter and I were in black. and black..

But with so many babies there, there was no problem getting hold of some Wet Ones to clean the mud from my legs and dress, because we had run out without tissues, of course....and without a lot of other things, too!!
(Which daughter badly needed later, as it happened, she having ignored a couple of nature's warning signs)....

And the bride arrived in her second best jewelled and embroidered wedding outfit, on her tired father's arm, and poor Imram was running about everywhere still doing everything, and the ceremony was very short indeed..an ordinary English civil ceremony with two lady celebrants and Yorkshire accents!
And I signed the register in front of an interesting Botticelli nude....at least I think it was a Boticelli, but I didn't like to be seen to be taking too close an interest in what females might look like under long, looseflowing robes, but because they took lots and lots of photos, everyone else had plenty of opportunity to speculate!!
And then they had photos..and photos...and photos......and.....

And then the family got into a serious fight about who would drive Fiona and me from the ceremony.. she wanted to get some new lenses..I wanted to collect my camera and some unsplashed pantyhose from the hotel...everyone wanted to transport the foreigners and some old family feuds and rivalries surfaced...
Just one big happy family..........

Back at the house, there was a Bouncy Castle for the kids ( and some of the men)...

and lots of orange juice and lots of admiring the bride and her jewelry and her skin drawings and each other's costumes... and some not so gentle grilling of the groom's foreign mother and sister....
and then spicy dinner and the wedding cake....
Now the cake was a three piece masterpiece..the decorators had scanned in the picture of the bride and groom from the invitation and even added a nice beard for the groom...
And I managed a small fauxpas which everyone took as real wit when I remarked that in our culture the top layer was usually stored for the christening,but that wouldn't be possible with a fresh cream cake!

And it was about then that son decided his sister and I looked tired and had better be taken back to the hotel, even though I protested we were enjoying ourselves..
So I figured I'd log on and do this page, but the hotel switchboard refused to play ball, and for a while we looked like being in bed by 9.30 except that daughter decided she had been a bit hard on me all week, and got dressed again and we went down to the bar....just in time to see the bride and groom vanishing up the stairs,he carrying his wedding outfit, the special ceremonial turban held high.....
And Imram arrived too, and escorted his sister down again, she not being wed yet according to Muslim rites, though in the eyes of the law she was already my daughter...

So the groom and his sister and I sat in the bar for his last night as a bachelor and wondered what the heck we were all doing here in this wet place, and I scowled at the Astra outside the window in the long English twilight and drank my brown rum as well as daughter's brown ale, which she hated and son, a good Muslim now, didn't drink at all..and they smoked so much I had a really gross asthma attack, and it wouldn't ease, even after we went to bed, and our room was over the reception room where a less sedate and less brief wedding was being held, and then the daughter started to snore so I finally got up and put my earplugs in and thought I might as well have stayed at home....
Next day was to be the crucial one..the REAL wedding, and it would also be the test of the new hairdo the Leeds hairdresser had designed...
Well, Thomas Hardy of Headrow, your offsider is a miracle man----he DID cut those offending ends off, but in such a nice way....
and the style DID hold up for the two days, just as he said!
AND he took my webpage address as well.....
Fancy having to come halfway across the world to meet a computer-literate hairdresser!!
Even though I did get l lost on the way back to the flat, it was worth it!!
And the next day??
That's another story, folks.....

BUT I'LL KEEP YOU POSTED!

Love to everyone over 50,and everyone on our side! -from ..Robink

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