Wells-next-the-Sea

Wells-next-the-Sea, a dramatic setting for a long delayed celebration

Journey of a Covid Survivor

And so, we went East on the M62 and South on the A1(M) and then East and Easter and Further East along tunnel-like Autumnal lanes, going nowhere but to the edge of the island nation and the impossibly bronze and blue  horizons of the north Norfolk coast. It was what I call “getting away from it all” with precious friends.

Me, Michael, Sally, Janet

Wells-next-the-Sea

To Quay View Cottage, a three-storey, perfectly situated, beautifully clean, well-equipped holiday let which had everything we needed to hunker down at Halloween, catch up and put the world to rights. As W H Hudson (author, naturalist and ornithologist) described it:

There are few places in England where you can get so much wildness and desolation of sea and sandhills, woods, green marsh and grey saltings as at Wells in Norfolk.

View from our bedroom at Quay View Cottage

Celebrations Assemble

Reasons to gather:

• two postponed 60th birthday weekends
• an imminent 65th birthday
• the awarding of an OBE
• the recent Empty Nesting and the happiness/success of All Our Daughters
• the recovery of Yours Truly from Ghastly Nasty Covid

Wells-next-the-Sea with, top left, the "old" lifeboat station

Gulls and Geese

The purple evening light (a bit like the “blue hour” of twilight in Scandinavia) bathed the tail end of half term holidaymakers, the younglings squealing as the seagulls and geese swooped and squabbled for territory on the harbour walls and local soccer field.

Sea Wall Defences

In such a flat, expansive landscape, a little elevation goes a long way. It was therefore memorable to walk the length of the Flood Defence Wall under dramatic skies.

Dangerous maze-like coast

The marshes, scrubland, sea, sandbanks and horizons intermingled in ever-changing arrangements, connecting and disconnecting in disorientating maze-like channels. And over us all, the massive skies, moody, broody, threatening, and glorious.

Yes, I Know I used the bottom left snap already, but it just sums up my memory of the weekend!

Holkham Bay

Our destination at the end of the Flood Defence Wall was the two-mile stretch of Holkham Beach, bleeding into dunes which sheltered us from the wind for our picnic.

There's that same pic again, along with Holkham beach, a basking seal and colourful beach huts

Offshore wind farms

Behind us was the desolation of nature and in front of us, bending the mind, were limitless skies merging into the horizon-stretching sea. Could that be a mirage or an offshore wind farm?

Wells Crab House

We self-catered apart from one evening spent in the intimate and informal Wells Crab House where you can identify the name of the fisherman who caught the food on your plate. As the website (justifiably) boasts “Nothing better than getting our deliveries so fresh with wellies still dripping with the sea.” So, there was Curry Battered Prawns, Mackerel Terrine, Haddock Pot and Salmon Noodles followed by Scallop Crumble, Crab Platter, Lobster and Fresh Cod.

Sandbanks and quicksands

Travel writer, Peter Sager, wrote of north Norfolk:

What a coast this is, with its salt marshes and lavender, its channels, dunes, bays and crumbling Ice Age cliffs, lonelier and wilder than its Suffolk neighbour, Arctic, melancholic, beautiful, treacherous, with sandbanks and quicksands, storms and floods, and never-ending erosion.

Sadly the East Coast is the likeliest bit of England to be lost to the sea if the impending climate catastrophe is not averted. Now I have spent time on this watery land, clinging to the island flats, I feel that losing north Norfolk (and, for that matter, parts of Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire and north Wales) to the sea would be a tragedy.

Three Resolutions

The weasel in the garden

And 2021 has begun. I resolve to Keep Walking and Keep Creatively Visualising images like the one above and the one at the end of this post. And I Resolve to only check on the news once a day. Walk. Love. Limit the News. Walk. Love. Limit the News. Winter sun. Flurries of snow. Wintery frost. Lockdown Three Point Zero. Rising Covid cases, hospital admissions and deaths. As Reignier says in Henry VI Part One

Defer no time, delays have dangerous ends.

This is a Shakespearian line that should be tattooed onto the UK government’s eyeballs. For the best part of the last year, life-saving decisions have been slow, many have been contradictory and, from the week of Cummings-gate, have been interpreted to suit everyone’s own circumstances because that was the lesson learned from BoJo’s support of the weasel in the Rose Garden. Hopefully the newest campaign to take Covid seriously will make an impact and bring down cases. Time will tell.

The coward on the hill

The President of America, in the dying days of his reign of misinformation, vulgar speechifying and inconsistently perverse decision-making, has incited a crowd of his supporters to invade and riot in the Capitol building leaving (to date) 5 dead bodies, broken glass, stolen goods, vandalised furtniture, and a (future) string of court appearances and prison sentences Although Trump shouted “We’re going to walk down Pennsylvania Avenue…. I know everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol building…” he only meant a “royal we” and “everyone” didn’t include his own bloated orange self, so he sent his supporters into notoriety and infamy as he returned, I imagine, to put his feet up on a padded cushion in the White House and eat a cheeseburger and pretend he was innocent.

Cartoon by John Shakespeare for The Age

The rebel without a plan

As ever, something in Shakespeare nagged at me and I realised it was Jack Cade in Henry VI Part Two inveterately boasting and inciting a mob. Even though his promises to the angry and starving peasants are impossible, the promises are still effective at rabble-rousing the mob to march and, of course, many are killed.

Valiant I am…. I fear neither sword nor fire…. When I am king, as king I shall be…. I thank you good people…. I will make myself a knight…. Burn all the records of the realm…. My mouth shall be the parliament…. I must sweep the court clean of such filth as thou art…. Thou hast men about thee that usually talk of a noun and a verb…. Away with him – he speaks Latin!.... Take him away and behead him…. I’ll defy them all…. (Jack Cade in Henry VI Part Two)

Jack Cade's rebellion

The gardener with a pruning sword 

But Jack Cade’s life becomes (like Trump’s is likely to be), not a bang but a sad whimper away from the crowds. The witness to Cade’s death (indeed his unwitting executioner) realises who Jack Cade is as he dies and calls him “monstrous traitor” and ends the scene with a grim final action:

Hence I will drag thee headlong by the heels

Unto a dunghill which shall be thy grave….

Leaving thy trunk for crows to feed upon.

The identity of Jack Cade’s nemesis is – future High Sheriff of Kent in history, working class gardener in Shakespeare’s play – Alexander Iden – an English spelling of Eden…. Let’s hope 2021 becomes more of an Eden than 2020. Walk. Love. Limit the News. Walk. Love. Limit the News.

An Edenic Future Visualisation using snapshots of the past

The Railway Children

“Charming, simply charming”

Thus said William Mervyn as The Old Gentleman in Lionel Jefferies’ film of The Railway Children. And on this Valentine’s Day in 2020, as Storm Dennis raged round the UK bringing floods and transport chaos, traditional English afternoon tea was given a spin for Yorkshire’s Railway Enthusiasts. Starting in Oxenhope (ticket office featuring coal fire), the Keighley and Worth Valley line ran wouldja believe? a Prosecco-tasting Valentine’s Day Special. Who knew there was so much to learn about Prosecco? As the rain battered the old-fashioned carriages, it was certainly an unusual and atmospheric way to celebrate almost 34 years of married life…. 

Sustainable Christmas

Sustainable Christmas Decorations
Last year (pictures click here) we made a pilgrimage to the different Christmas decorations in Burton Agnes Hall, Chatsworth House and Harewood House. We return to Burton Agnes as often as we can for two reasons: the Hall and Gardens are beautiful, and the Cunliffe-Lister family marshall friends and colleagues to create very distinctive decorations, sometimes hand-knitted, sometimes using folded paper; often using foliage from the grounds to mount the displays and this year there was a focus on sustainable decorations.

Friendly staff and welcoming atmosphere
Often the room guides can point out their own individual contribution so there is a team-spirit and homemade feel to the Burton Agnes Christmas celebrations. This year snowmen were “hiding” in every room for the eagle-eyed and I was glad to see the local primary school’s regular contribution, this year made of recycled items (in top picture above.) Our Christmas Crackers this year are recyclable and homemade and presents are wrapped in old paper or newspaper. Every step, they say, is a step in the right direction….

Next Christmas….
The Hall dates from 1598 and there are three features that impress me every time I visit: the Great Hall is awe-inspiring; the Oak Staircase is a marvel of engineering and restoration; and the Long Gallery at the top of the house is perfect for “taking a turn about the room” with its curved ceiling. I’m already looking forward to visiting next Christmas. Meanwhile, here are my immediate families' four trees: two in Bradford, one in Leeds, one in Badby...

No Excuses Now

 

I hope Tory Voters are right
I hope the new government will turn the UK into a huge post-Brexit success. WHAT DID THE TORY MANIFESTO PROMISE?

• Get Brexit Done
• Take measures to reverse the climate emergency
• Protect and enhance the NHS
• Boost the Education Service
• Improve the national Criminal Justice and Penal systems
• Develop an immigration service appropriate to the 21st Century
• Build enough social housing
• Protect and enhance the lives of all vulnerable people
• Unleash the potential of the UK’s forgotten towns with major investments
• Improve our transport infrastructure
• Protect jobs and human rights
• Be taken seriously on the World Stage.

THAT’S WHAT THEY’VE PROMISED IN THEIR MANIFESTO. That’s (I hope) why TORY VOTERS voted for them because TORY VOTERS BELIEVE THIS WILL HAPPEN. I hope so too. Really hope so. I love the UK. I love its history, its culture, its countryside. I wish we had voted to remain aligned to Europe in the Referendum back in 2016 but we didn’t, so I have always thought that Brexit in some form should happen, despite my reservations about the honesty of the original exercise.

Well, the Tories have had three-and-a-half years to deliver Brexit. They haven’t – and for two of those years because of their own in-fighting – and NOW the country has voted to give the mendacious Boris Johnson a chance to Get Brexit Done. So, I watch with fascinated interest – and hope the Tory Voters are right – and within months the country regains its pride, strength and stability. Time will tell.

Right Left Divide
My final comfort is that (in the graphic below, with one result left to call):

• the Right of Centre Vote Share (Con + Brx) = 45.6%
• the Left of Centre Vote Share (Lab + LD + SNP + GRN) = 50.3%

with the rest made up of Northern Ireland parties and Independent individuals. If only a New Left Alliance could emerge from the ashes of the 2019 election…. a Rebel Alliance?

Rolled on by a horse....

(Genuinely) Clever Clive and (Genuinely) Buffoonish Boris
The late (clever and funny) Clive James wrote after an early Boris Johnson appearance as (short-lived) Foreign Secretary:

Boris gave an immediate impression of total dishevelment. It’s not his clothes and coiffure, but his personality that makes him look as if he had been rolled on by a horse and then seduced by it.

Clive James’s later poetry, like his TV and cultural criticism disarmed as well as skewered pomposity – he was that rare beast in public life, someone who wore his learning lightly. Unlike our current Prime Minister who likes to obfuscate the truth beneath bluster. Only Boris Johnson could answer a question on the traitorous Fake FactCheck site set up by the Tories with reference to:

“hunting the snark.… Fermat’s last theorem…. the riddle of the Sphinx…. the Bermuda triangle…. croutons….”

(Search for it on the internet if you don’t believe me – Boris Johnson answering question about fact check website.) His answer was designed to provoke laughter and to deflect from the serious accusation in the question. It’s a well-known technique that clever students use in Debating Societies in schools and universities time and again.

A sheep, a shark, a drunk and a lozenge
Check out the Jeremy Vine account admiring Boris Johnson’s apparent genius when Johnson gave what seemed like a spontaneous after-dinner speech…. It’s a clear example of our current Prime Minister’s elusive smoke and mirrors trickery. The winter election next Thursday seems to be framed around the future. Promises, promises…. But I find myself considering the present and the past decade. Do I want more of the same? Do I believe the Tories? Since the imposition of austerity in 2010, has the UK become a stronger, safer, more prosperous, more cultural, more law-abiding, more civilised country? If not, who has been in power since 2010? Answer: the Tories, along with five years of LiberalDemocratEnablers. They have presided over:

• an increase in the national debt (so those austerity measures worked, didn’t they?)

1. £850 billion in 2010 to £1.786 trillion by December 2018
2. £175 billion spend on Emergency Brexit stimulus by Bank of England (Brexit, remember, was initiated by the Tories and they have had over three years to implement it and the first attempts to make it happen were THWARTED by the Tories themselves)
3. 86 million pounds spent on non-existent ferries
4. £1 billion to bribe the DUP into a form of coalition that ended disastrously
5. shameful increase in child poverty (32 - 35% of UK children in this category now)
6. 80% of the 5.3 million self employed live below the poverty line
7. 185,000 deaths attributed to the austerity measures brought in by the Tories and LibDems
8. 150% increase in student debt (student fees up 300%)
9. GDP fallen to -0.1%
10. Sterling against the Euro and the USD fallen by 15%
11. 25 – 30 % cut to all government departments
12. 25 – 30 % cut to local councils, mainly centred on Labour councils

• a degrading of health

1. 2400% increase in the use of food banks
2. 10,000 fewer medical professionals and there is now a dangerous nurse shortage
3. 25,000 fewer bed spaces for mental illness
4. 25% cuts for our disabled community
5. 80% cuts to Mobility allowance
6. increase in teenage suicide by 70%
7. suicide up 12% in the year 2018
8. self harm among young women up 70%
9. life expectancy down 3 years
10. NHS satisfaction level at lowest recorded rate
11. and don't get me started on the current lies about what hospital "buildings" they are currently promising

• education

1. over 1000 Sure Start centres closed
2. over 700 libraries closed
3. eradication of the Education Maintenance Allowance
4. 36,000 teachers have left the profession and there is now a teacher shortage

• crime and justice

1. 25,000 fewer police
2. 20,000 fewer prison officers
3. increase of 50% in hate crimes
4. increase of knife crime by 150% to 22,000 per year

• infrastructure (especially housing and transport)

1. 1000% increase in homelessness
2. 1,200% increase in rough sleeping
3. mass evictions caused by the bedroom tax
4. Zero starter homes built, despite Tory flagship programme
5. Council home building down 90% since 2010
6. 200,000 social homes lost since 2010
7. one million families on council home waiting list
8. 100,000 increase on the council home waiting list since 2010
9. 10,000 fewer firefighters
10. over 650 football pitches closed
11. manufacturing, contruction and auto industries in recession
12. half of local councils are facing bankruptcy
13. Claims of “job creation” are masked by self-employed, ZeroHoursContracts and gig economy causing the OECD to suggest the unemployment rate in the UK is really 13% if you calculate the 3 million hidden unemployed

Voting for more of the same?
We are an entrenched country of foodbanks and multimillionaires. How can that be? And yet it is likely that many people in the UK will still vote for the Tories, the “nasty party.’ The party of the few, not the many. How long, in normal life, would you give someone the benefit of the doubt? Has almost 10 years been long enough to make improvements? 10 years! Are you going to vote for more of the same?

The Last Post

2019 Remembrance

Today is 11.11.19 – and exactly 100 years since the very first Remembrance Sunday in 1919. At the weekend, the great and the good (in particular the surviving veterans – very few now from The Great War, The War To End All Wars) laid wreaths at the Cenotaph in London and remembered “The Glorious Dead.” In addition to the current (imo unworthy) office holder, five former prime ministers attended – Sir John Major, Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Theresa May – and, overlooking the ceremony from a balcony the one queen who has presided over 15 prime ministers (and grown up under a further six.)

No brainer

For me, I respect the concept of Remembrance. Apart from anything else, I believe the Royal British Legion to be a fantastically effective charity. Its campaigning and support – practical, financial, and emotional – are all essential, especially given the way successive governments have treated and continue to treat veterans and their families. All wars produce great art, and the poetry of the First World War is rightly lauded. In 2009, to commemorate the deaths of Henry Allingham and Harry Patch, two of the last few combatants surviving, Carol Ann Duffy used an extract from Wilfred Owen’s Dulce et Decorum Est to produce a poignant and cinematic rewinding riff on remembrance – if we could only wind back time and the dead could “lean against a wall.”

Last Post

by Carol Ann Duffy

'In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.'

If poetry could tell it backwards, true, begin

that moment shrapnel scythed you to the stinking mud…

but you get up, amazed, watch bled bad blood

run upwards from the slime into its wounds;

see lines and lines of British boys rewind

back to their trenches, kiss the photographs from home –

mothers, sweethearts, sisters, younger brothers

not entering the story now

to die and die and die.

Dulce – No – Decorum – No – Pro patria mori.

You walk away.

You walk away; drop your gun (fixed bayonet)

like all your mates do too –

Harry, Tommy, Wilfred, Edward, Bert –

and light a cigarette.

There's coffee in the square,

warm French bread

and all those thousands dead

are shaking dried mud from their hair

and queuing up for home. Freshly alive,

a lad plays Tipperary to the crowd, released

from History; the glistening, healthy horses fit for heroes, kings.

You lean against a wall,

your several million lives still possible

and crammed with love, work, children, talent, English beer, good food.

You see the poet tuck away his pocket-book and smile.

If poetry could truly tell it backwards,

then it would.

I will be your treasure

Detectorists
I was late to discover this gem of a BBC comedy series but became enamoured at a perfect time: my birthday month. Mackenzie Crook directed and wrote (with Andrew Ellard) this 19-episode masterpiece of friendship, love, hobbying, history, rural life and the search for Anglo-Saxon gold. The writing is understated but underpinned with quotable lines:

• We’re time travellers
• Nostalgia conventions aren’t what they used to be
• Ring pull…83… Tizer…
• Surprisingly bland
• What you’ve got going for you now is that she’s met you, Lance….
• Will you search through the loamy earth for me?

What do I love about it?
It’s a series that presents profound themes in a deceptively light-hearted way. The use of the music by Johnny Flynn and Dan Michaelson connects characters and motifs. (A brilliant cameo song by The Unthanks sisters (Magpie) punctuates a key episode in series 3.) The production values, acting and authenticity to its original premise remain loving and attentive. Lies are told, confrontations occur, but redemption happens, the truth comes out and life moves on. The huge dramas remain buried (in the loamy earth) or are in the distance, fleetingly glimpsed. I was lucky to see Mackenzie Crook live on stage in the brilliant Jez Butterworth play, Jerusalem, a work which reminded me of why I love England; and Detectorists has a similar feel, connecting to ancient truths about tolerance and acceptance, the mongrel nature of our society and how precious is the land beneath our feet. We must learn from history and nature and be better people – there’s a truth to the gold of ordinary lives…. If you’ve yet to discover Detectorists, I envy the treasures waiting for you….

I will be your treasure
The theme song (composed and sung by Johnny Flynn) contains all the themes about digging for the truth of what matters in life and how patience is a true virtue. The compassion and kindness riddling through the seams of Detectorists are patterned into pairings who are all given perfect TV moments:

• Andy and Lance (Mackenzie Crook and Toby Jones)
• Andy and Becky (MC with Rachael Stirling)
• Andy and Veronica (MC with Diana Rigg)
• Lance and Maggie (TJ with Lucy Benjamin)
• Lance and Sophie (TJ with Aimee-Ffion Edwards)
• Lance and Kate (TJ with Alexa Davies)
• Lance and Toni (TJ with Rebecca Callard)

And there are telling moments between each pair variation; I’m thinking here of the arc between Rachael Stirling’s Becky and Rebecca Callard’s Toni and their scene under a tree in the final episode. If Andy and Lance are the centre of the show, all the other characters are equally vivid:

• Maggie and Tony (Lucy Benjamin and Adam Riches)
• Art and Paul (Simon Farnaby and Paul Casar), aka Terra Firma, aka Dirt Sharks, aka AntiquiSearchers, aka Simon and Garfunkel

Danebury Metal Detector Club
Then there is the rest of the club, genius characters all (hats off to the casting by Catherine Willis):

• Terry and Sheila (Gerald Horan and the sublime Sophie Thompson)
• Louise and Varde (Laura Checkley and Orion Ben)
• Russell and Hugh (Pearce Quigley and Divian Ladwa)

Detectorists is a character-driven show, though the setting (Framlingham pretending to be Danebury) is also memorable with exquisite shots of the countryside and its creatures, including some memorable aerial shots, by the technical team led by cinematographers Jamie Cairney (13 episodes), Mattias Nyberg (6 episodes) and John Sorapure (1 episode) and editor Colin Fair (all 19 episodes.)

Singer (and actor) Johnny Flynn plus Mark Rylance and Mackenzie Crook in Jez Butterworth's Jerusalem

Full lyrics for Johnny Flynn’s theme song (click here to hear him sing it)
Will you search through the loamy earth for me
Climb through the briar and bramble
I will be your treasure

I felt the touch of the kings and the breath of the wind
I knew the call of all the song birds
They sang all the wrong words
I'm waiting for you, I'm waiting for you

Will you swim through the briny sea for me
Roll along the ocean's floor
I will be your treasure

I'm with the ghosts of the men who can never sing again
There's a place follow me
Where a love lost at sea
Is waiting for you, is waiting for you

Would you drift o’er the rolling fields for me
Hoard me in the highest bough
I will be your treasure

But in history’s rhyme there’s a place and a time
And a truth to the gold
That the folds cannot hold
I’m waiting for you, I’m waiting for you

The Familiars

Statue of Alice Nutter in Roughlee, Gawthorpe Hall, the Pendle Witch Trials and Stacey Hall's The Familiars

The Familiars by Stacey Halls
During a recent trip to Scotland, Sally, Emily and I listened rapt to an audio reading of the tale of Fleetwood Shuttleworth. Stacey Hall’s novel The Familiars gives an account of pregnant Fleetwood and her choice of midwife, the enigmatic Alice Grey, and how they both get caught up in the historical events and people involved in the Pendle Witch Trials. I don’t want to reveal any spoilers about the novel but would highly recommend it if you enjoy strong female characters, historical fiction, Gothic conventions and stories of friendship, brutality, betrayal, hypocrisy, religious fundamentalism and the clash of contrasting spirits.

Gawthorpe Hall

Pendle Heritage Centre and Gawthorpe Hall
Though Alice Grey is an historical name, her character is imagined. Fleetwood Shuttleworth, however, is the fabulous name of the real-life owner of Gawthorpe Hall, a mighty building open to the public right now, in the hands of the National Trust. The Elizabethan interior has panelling and ceilings of astonishing merit. Not far away is the informative and moving Pendle Heritage Centre which provides the details, amongst many other things, of:

• James I’s tightening of the screws following the Gunpowder Plot
• the Demdike and Chattox families
• pedlar John Law and his “cursing” by Alison Device
• Malkin Tower and the “Witches’ Sabbath”
• Alice Nutter, Ashlar House, Lancaster Castle, Roger Nowell
• Jennet Device and the Pendle Witch Trial and the 11 hangings that resulted

  

  Pendle Heritage Centre (and more Gawthorpe Hall images)

Today is the day it all starts

Soft blessing of rain
On Friday 16th August 2019 the extended families of my (Leapling) niece, Rebecca, and her fiancé, Marc, gathered under a beautiful pavilion with a countryside view at King’s Croft Hotel in Pontefract. Rain fell like a soft blessing and the service was friendly and profound, as it should be when two people commit to each other in public in front of family and friends.

All the senses in play
Weddings unite. All our eyes were bathed in filters of happiness. All our ears were treated to wishes and hopes, desires and dreams for the couple and for each other. We had a wonderful feast of food and drink. All our hugs and kisses, dance moves – fast and slow – smiles and tears of joy and nostalgia reminded each person of other occasions, other people, including those who were absent and were missed, and other situations. You can’t help contemplate your own life when you see someone embarking on a new phase of theirs.

All the elements throughout the world
Why is marriage still a desirable rite of passage? Before the year 1184, religious leaders in England had nothing to do with weddings and the ceremony itself was only allowed inside churches in the 16th Century. For most of human history, the joining of two people together has been a secular affair, from the pagan woodland ceremonies (using the four elements of Air, Earth, Fire and Water) to the community handfasting represented onstage in Shakespeare plays like As You Like It and The Winter’s Tale. But throughout history, in every country in the world, in very different settings and buildings, following customs and rituals as varied as the people on the planet, humans still want couples to succeed when they join together formally.

Family and friends
I've always loved being a member of an extended family catching up at get-togethers. And it’s always fascinating to get a glimpse into the work and leisure lives of the couple being married. I can honestly say it was a day where goodwill was palpable, where love was, indeed, all around and in the air.

Daddy bear
The father of the bride, my beloved brother Chris, gave a speech from the bottom of his Little House on the Prairie heart. Did he blub a bit? Yes he did. Did I love him all the more? Yes I did. Aaron read the following, the final line of which provides the title of this post, though I’ve always thought (probably the form tutor in me) that every day is a fresh day, a new day, the day it all starts again….

Just two people in love
Today is a day you will always remember
The greatest in anyone's life
You'll start off the day just two people in love
And end it as husband and wife.

It's a brand new beginning, the start of a journey
With moments to cherish and treasure
And although they'll be times when you both disagree
These will surely be outweighed by pleasure

Secrets of marriage
You'll have heard many words of advice in the past
When the secrets of marriage were spoken
But you know that the answers lie hidden inside
Where the bond of true love lies unbroken

Today is the day it all starts
So live happy forever as lovers and friends
It's the dawn of a new life for you
As you stand there together with love in your eyes
From the moment you whisper ‘I do'

And with luck all your hopes and your dreams can be real
May success find its way to your hearts
Tomorrow can bring you the greatest of joys
But today is the day it all starts