Danskcolin: Saturday August 19th - Monday August 21st 2023: our Golden Wedding

Saturday August 19th 2023

For Lois and me, this is the day of our belated Golden Wedding 'do', postponed from last August, so that the younger of our two daughters, Sarah and her family, could take part - they moved back to the UK from Australia a couple of months ago after 7 years "down under".

Lois gets in the party mood with a couple of balloons

"Do's" are not really my bag - I'm a shy person, but I was happy for our elder daughter Alison and her husband Ed to stage this party, because I thought, "Well it's a chance for me to spend time with Jill, my only surviving sibling, and for the next generation and the generation after that to spend time together and get to know each other better etc etc, so that's all right with me!".

As it turns out, however, I actually start enjoying the whole thing, after I'm about 60 minutes in - who would have thought it eh? Perhaps there's still hope for me to become a bit more of a "social animal". What do YOU think?

Don't tell me haha! [You'll have to get a move on, then, at your age haha! - Ed]

Plus, there are only going to be 16 people here, so it's quite manageable even for an introvert.

Guests: (1) Lois and me, (2) our daughter Alison, plus Ed and their 3 teenage children, (3) our daughter Sarah, plus Francis and their 10-year-old twins, (4) my sister Jill, (5) Lois's niece Sharon, plus Michael and their daughter "Little" Lois, (6) Lois's great-nephew Harrison.

Here are some pictures of Saturday morning's food preparation - the 'do' is starting at about 1pm. We plan to have a Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland Mad Hatter's Tea Party-style long table out on the terrace, which is appropriate as it's a crumbling Victorian mansion, originally built for one of Queen Victoria's Vice-Admirals - you know, John Parish, who was charged with 'ruling the waves' of the China Seas - remember?

And the terrace overlooks part of the house's extensive 6.5 acre grounds, mostly woodland, which is nice.

view of the so-called non-standard "grass tennis court"

I set up my 1972-2022 "Fifty Years" slide show on the big TV

in case people run out of things to say to each other

12:15 First to arrive are Sarah, Francis, and their 10-year-old twins Lily and Jessica, and my sister Jill, who's come by train.

13:00 By 1 pm, everybody's here, Ed gets the sausages and burgers ready, and the Anniversary lunch begins out on the terrace.

Lois watches with interest as Ed cooks the sausages and burgers

our daughter Sarah with the twins Lily and Jessica

some of "the youngsters": Lois's great-niece "Little" Lois, then Josie, Rosalind and Isaac

(Ali and Ed's children) and Harrison (Lois's great-nephew)

16:00 Time for Lois and me to cut the cake, made for us by local bakers, Cakes & Cocoa of Headley, and yum-yum, that cake starts disappearing pretty fast, I can tell you!

the cake soon starts disappearing - yum yum!

my sister Jill tucks into her slice of anniversary cake

18:00 We take a look at my "Fifty Shades of Marriage" slide show, and wouldn't you know it, some people have brought along their own slightly embarrassing pictures of Lois and me from our courtship years, including this one, which is now officially the first picture ever of us together, so it would have been taken in 1970. Oh dear!

And the photo is so obviously a set-up, which we must have got duped into staging, in that cottage in Shropshire - do you remember that weekend?

flashback to 1970 - the earliest known picture of Lois and me together

in a cottage in Shropshire

And somebody has found the pictures Lois and I took of each other on some of our so-called "nature rambles" in the Oxfordshire countryside in the summer of 1970 [not shown].

On the "official" slide show, however, it's nice to see our wedding-group picture of all our wedding guests from August 1972. And so nice to see Sharon, Lois's niece, who's now in her 50's and here today for the celebration, in the wedding photo as a little blondie toddler with her mum - awwwwww!!!!

circled towards the left, Lois's niece Sharon,

as a little blondie toddler on our wedding-day;

my sister Jill is on Lois's left

Sharon now, in her 50's

22:00 Lois are exhausted by 10 pm - we're not used to non-stop chat, because most days these days we're just consorting with each other 24/7, so it's a fairly peaceful life for us normally, to put it mildly!

The rest of the older people in the group stay eating and chatting in the kitchen till 11pm, while Lois and I are tucked up in bed.