Vaccinated Diamond Birthday

Six Months Later

So, six months after I was born in Wakefield, Sally Anne Allard was born on St Patrick’s Day in Bradford. March 2021 marked Sally’s Diamond Birthday. It wasn’t “normal” in that there was no meal out and no trip to the cinema or theatre…. But it was normal in keeping up the tradition of getting together with our daughters (even if we were walking two by two) and eating and drinking (a picnic in the open air, socially distanced.) Last March we began locking down before the government asked us to and this year we look forward to restrictions being lifted. So in the weeks and months to come I hope we’ll have a series of further birthday-style events….

St Patrick’s Day over the previous five years

• 2016 – Anomaleesa at The Everyman Cinema in Leeds
• 2017 – Gardening course and the live action Beauty and the Beast at The Everyman
• 2018 – Icy walk, wintry views and meal at home with (Sally’s choice of) Minority Report on the TV
• 2019 – The RSC touring production of Matilda at Bradford Alhambra and Green Book at Showcase
• 2020 – Almost UK-wide Lockdown, hikes (on different days) to the Druid’s Altar and Top Withins

No cinema, no theatre, but plenty still to enjoy

In the bullet-points above, I’ve mentioned cultural events that made 2016-19 distinctive, but all years have still included cards, a cake and presents revolving around themes of gardening, glamour, reading, flowers, food and drink. This year a parade of visitors passed by the garden gate to wish Many Happy Returns and delivery folk turned up at a steady pace…. Unusual gifts this year included a phone call from Australia, a home-knitted cardigan and a kit from Dishoom to make Naan-Bacon-Rolls. (After nearly 35 years of marriage we are learning to be cooperative in the kitchen!)

Birthday Talents

It’s easy to celebrate birthdays with Sally (or spend Christmas, or go on holiday, or do Bonfire Night, or do anything really….) All that’s needed are messages of love from family and friends and some time together making human connections. All the Lockdowns in the world can’t squash Sally’s talents for being generous and open-hearted to whatever can be achieved with whatever resources are at hand….

Spring in the air

The birds are nest-building, the daffodils are out, the buds are budding, the daylight hours are longer – these are all signifiers of Sally’s birthday every year – the Spring of the year. And in 2021, the Covid vaccine rollout continues apace…. A Spring-like birthday present from the scientific and medical community. What will St Patrick’s Day in March 2022 bring? We’ll be a year older. Will we still be socially distancing? Wearing masks? Time will tell.

A Birthday

by Christina Rossetti

My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a water’d shoot;

My heart is like an apple-tree

Whose boughs are bent with thickset fruit;

My heart is like a rainbow shell

That paddles in a halcyon sea;

My heart is gladder than all these

Because my love is come to me. 

Raise me a dais of silk and down;

Hang it with vair and purple dyes;

Carve it in doves and pomegranates,

And peacocks with a hundred eyes;

Work it in gold and silver grapes,

In leaves and silver fleurs-de-lys;

Because the birthday of my life

Is come, my love is come to me.

Lockdown Puzzles

Putting the pieces together
The first jigsaw is thought to have been a Dissected Map of “Europe divided into its kingdoms” designed by John Spilsbury in 1776. They were seen as educational tools rather than leisure activities. I have vivid memories of doing jigsaws at St Austin’s primary school: absorbed, tongue out, transported, concentrating. I liked the feeling of creating one big picture with the oddly-shaped fragments. It was an activity that satisfied the Completer-Finisher in me…. Some things never change.

Testing hypotheses, trial and error
It doesn’t take a genius to understand the values of jigsaw puzzling. Apart from relaxation, concentration and learning to solve problems, researchers have revealed that Puzzlers can improve short-term memory, stave off dementia and train the pathways between the logical signals of the left brain and the creative intuition of the right brain. You develop resilience, tenacity and the ability to see through a task one bit at a time. One piece after another. Building a picture. Controlling the chaos. Perfect for lockdown.

I want to break free

Pumpkins by Family and Friends and Bolton Abbey 2019....

I'm a shooting star, leaping through the sky....
To the pounding, anthemic sound of rock group Queen, this year’s Bolton Abbey Bonfire and Fireworks may have been the best yet. We’ve been attending since the first year in 2015: the James Bond Themed Music set a very high bar; in 2016 the Best of British went a bit wrong (probably because of the result of the 2016 EU referendum….the universe was taunting me…); in 2017 it was Music from the Movies – a match for the first year; 2018 had problems with strong winds and the Musicals accompaniment didn’t always match the display. 2019, however, was a Top Year – the music of Queen, a superb firework display, a much better layout of the stalls and facilities – and a perfect night for pagan customs. It’s a fantastic treat and a great way to herald the approach to Christmas and Winter….
Previous blogs about Bonfire Night have included:

• Chubbing as a nipper – click for my memories of childhood bonfires in Wakefield
• Burn bonfires, clear and bright – click to read about the symbols of burning with pics of the first Bolton Abbey Bonfire Night
• Halloween – click for the traditions of Halloween season
• Catherine and Guy – click for an explanation of the Catherine Wheel firework!
• Gunpowder, Treason and Plot – click for the gruesome realities behind Guy Fawkes

What's in a name?

Me, cousin Ann, Sally, Dan, Ellisa, Logan. god-daughter, Lisa

A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
A recent Christening in Ossett saw Ellisa Anna Clara christened in the magnificent but freezing Trinity Church, Ossett. An early question about each new life on Earth is what to call the new baby. Ellisa Anna Clara was blessed with a trio of names paying tribute to important members of her ancestral tribe. Celebrities often make the news with their decisions, like Gwyneth Paltrow’s Apple and Angie Bowie’s Zowie – I’m assuming the Mums had more say than Chris Martin and David Bowie in those cases – but they have to take a bow before the choices of Adelaide Zappa (and her husband Frank) with their offspring’s names: Moon Unit, Dweezil and Diva Thin Muffin.

Ellisa's family and godparents, Mum and daughter, niece Jess and Chris. "How far that little candle throws its beams - So shines a good deed in a naughty world." (Shakespeare in Merchant of Venice)

What’s in a name?
It’s strange that, after a day or two, the baby (the child, the teenager, the adult….) become(s) the name they’ve been given. So my own children quickly became Emily and Harriet (though particular variations occur regularly…. Em, Emilia, Haz, HarrietRose….) and no doubt Ellisa will now forever be Ellisa, as her brother Logan is impeccably Logan, until either of them suddenly start wanting to be called a variation. Somewhere in America, no doubt Mrs Zappa found it unremarkable to shout “Moon Unit, come and get your tea! Dweezil, tidy your bedroom! Diva Thin Muffin, what time do you call this?!” Perhaps, like Zowie Bowie (who now prefers to be known as successful film-maker, Duncan Jones) Moon Unit, Dweezil and Diva Thin Muffin go by more ordinary names these days…. The most exotic (real-life, non-celebrity) name I ever heard about was Allegra Star Hoopengarner-Blaha; and a favourite name on one of my registers as a teacher was Fraser Rumble which, to me, sounds like someone who will one day be a hero.

Sally, Chris, brother-in-law Mick, sister Teresa and Jess

Meanings of names
I was named Antony (without an ‘h’ and I take pride in the lack of an ‘h’ since it was good enough for Shakespeare in Antony and Cleopatra.) My sister Teresa and I are godparents to Ellisa’s marvellous Mum, so it was a privilege to come full circle and witness our god-daughter having her own child named and celebrated in high style. And lovely to catch up with the extended family news. Names start to mean the people they are but there is a long tradition of trying to trace the origins of names, so I spent some time doing that for some of the guests at the Christening:

• Ann = “favour, grace” (Hebrew from Hannah)
• Terry = “ruler of the people” (Germanic from Theodoricus)
• Lisa/Ellisa = “my God is an oath/my God is bountiful/devoted to God” (Hebrew from Elizabeth)
• Dan = “God is my judge” (Hebrew from Daniel)
• Logan = “from the little hollow” (Scottish)
• Nick = “victory of the people” (Greek from Nikolaos)
• Daniela = “God is my judge” (Hebrew, feminine form of Daniela)
• Eliana = “Daughter of the sun” (Greek/Latin)
• Livio = from Livy (Titus Livius) who wrote a history of the city of Rome (Latin)

• Antony = from Roman family name Antonius, possibly meaning “priceless” (Latin)
• Sally = “lady, princess, noblewoman” (Hebrew from Sarah)
• Emily = “aiming to equal or excel” (Latin from Aemilius)
• Harriet = “rules the home” (Germanic from Heimirich to Henry to Harry to feminine form)

• Mick = “who is like God?” (Hebrew from Michael)
• Teresa = from Saint Teresa of Avila (16th century nun), possibly meaning “harvester” (Latin)
• Jess = first used as Jessica by Shakespeare in Merchant of Venice (probably based on Hebrew name Iscah from Bible meaning “rich”)
• Chris = “bearing Christ” (Greek from Christopher)

Siblings forever - Logan and Ellisa

Widescreen Birthday

Birthday boy with Nick Shelton artwork, prezzies, Spiderman cake, family dinner

Aug 2014 to Oct 2018
Happy Birthday to me on October 15th – I aim to space out my blog posts evenly but Life has a way of hijacking best intentions – but the images are enjoyable memories for me, even if they are a bit removed from the original date. Looking back to 2014 when I started this blog, my birthday post was about Shakespeare and Fargo’s Marge (“it’s a beautiful day”) Gunderson; in 2015 I presented gruesome evidence of a cyst on my back; in 2016 I had begun a routine of writing three days a week as my main retirement hobby; and in 2017 I began writing Book 2 of Rhenium Tales after finishing the first draft of Book 1. What now?

Brothers, sister, wife, daughters, friends....

2018
I’ve submitted material to some agents and started my collection of BadgesOfHonour rejection notices…. but also had some specific tips and insights to act upon. So Phase Two of My Writing Career begins…. Chris Grimley is a significant other in the family…. Empty Nest Syndrome is on the brink of happening again…. and I got my wishes for a birthday tea of salmon on lentils and treacle sponge pudding and custard…. Life! How did I get here from where I was?

First Man, Looper, The Age of Innocence, Lady and the Tramp with Theo Gluck, The Wife 

Film season
Movies have been a big part of September and October with the National Media Museum’s Widescreen Weekend in Pictureville allowing us to enjoy brilliant screenings of Scorcese’s The Age of Innocence, and Disney’s Lady and the Tramp (introduced in person by Theo Gluck, all the way from Hollywood; he’s the Head of Library and Restoration at Disney Studios.) I got rattled to bits by an IMAX First Man, admired Glenn Close in the preposterous but atmospheric The Wife, and loved Emily Blunt (Joseph Gordon Levitt and Bruce Willis) in the mind-bending Looper. Lots more films to look forward to later in the year, I think.

J B Priestley statue, Barry Cryer and Sophie Fyson, Joanna Trollope, Jenni Murray

Ilkley Literature Festival
Wrapping up my October birthday memories is my record of the Ilkley Literature Festival where Lee Hanson, Chair of the Priestley Society introduced the witty Barry Cryer and the gracious Sophie Fyson who spoke about the memoir of Sophie’s mum, Rosalie Batten, recently published by Great Northern Books: Priestley at Kissing Tree House. Rosalie was the secretary of great writer, humanitarian and Yorkshireman, J B Priestley, and has written with fascinating insight and disarming candour. Joanna Trollope and Jenni Murray both also provoked plenty of food for thought about writing, successful women and feminism today.

My birthday season colours....

Fish Finger Butties

Back in Yorkshire
After a week on Anglesey it was good to touch down in time to catch the final afternoon of the Saltaire Festival. The beaches, castles, walks and bridges of north Wales will appear in a future blog but, for now, I’m commemorating the joys of tucking in to a Fish Finger Butty (with a glass of prosecco!), listening to the music and soaking up the atmosphere of my adopted “village”, Saltaire. (I noticed I was not alone in gravitating towards the Fish Finger Heaven stand….)

A sense of place; images of Saltaire including the day of the Tour de Yorkshire

Sense of place
I’ve written elsewhere about the concept of “home” (having felt roots in Wakefield, Manchester, Stratford-upon-Avon, Helsinki, Sheffield, Leek, Bingley, Badby, Dorking and even in Sorrento, Italy and Wengen, Switzerland….) One good thing about Saltaire, though, is that it has risen to a sense of itself through a series of cultural and entrepreneurial decisions. When Jonathan Silver invested in the purchasing of Salt’s Mill in 1987 he boosted the local economy, leisure and work opportunities and promoted David Hockney’s work through gallery space in the converted mill. Regular events like the Advent Windows or the Open Gardens ensure there are often reasons to walk around the World Heritage site. So it’s always good to come “home.”

2017 Saltaire Festival - band at top = the excellent Backyard Burners

Soaring Tethered

Breakfast, dinner, tea
School dinners were always school dinners during the 1960s and 1970s. You gave the teacher your “dinner money.” I can’t remember when I started talking about lunch when I meant dinner. I haven’t graduated to dinner to mean tea and still say “what’re we having for tea?” (meaning what many call dinner.) Supper was always supper. Then a few years ago I learned some people talk about “kitchen supper” but I always thought of supper as being in your pyjamas sitting in front of the coal fire….(usually bread and dripping or a crumpet toasted on a toasting fork.) I can’t imagine sitting in the kitchen having supper….

Class
I imagined as a child I would always be working class. Then I did A Levels, went to the University of Manchester, lived abroad in Finland for a year and became a teacher. At what point on that journey did I become middle class? Does it matter? Why even think about it? Is it a social invention to keep people in line and control them? Does class exist? It clearly obsesses the British nation, and often troubles, niggles and unsettles me. I think it confuses and divides people. Two related memories have stuck in my mind.

Memory One
The first memory was on the night before being taken to university (in my older brother, Mick’s, car; my parents never owned a car.) I sat on the stairs in my house on Eastmoor Estate in Wakefield and wept like a baby – barrels of snot pouring down my chin – wishing I wasn’t always called the “brainy one.” Within a month or so at university I’d got over that feeling and was reading like a madman and writing essays that were competitively brainy (so brainy that when I came across one recently I didn’t understand the argument one bit.) So my grief about leaving home was short-lived. Something drove me on to devour education and aspire to be as brainy as possible. (Though lacking in common sense, as I think my wife, daughters and sister might testify….)

Burst balloon – memory two
The second memory I have is of listening to one of my favourite writers, Alan Garner, lecture about his own dislocation from his “class.” He was lecturing about writing and mental health and being honest about a personal experience when he felt he had had a nervous breakdown. He saw education and moving away from home akin to being blown up like a balloon. The balloon gets bigger and floats away, getting bigger, seeing further and wider, getting perspective, gaining height. Sometimes the balloon bursts. (How he felt about his own nervous breakdown.) The balloon needs sticking back together. Patching up. Before it can be inflated again. Sometimes, though, the balloon floats but it remains tethered to the ground, to its base, to where it came from. And it can be pulled back to its roots and bounce back again freely when it wants. And soar. And return. And soar again. Soaring tethered.

FOOM (Friends Of Ol' Marvel)

The Marvel Comics' Universe and the current film line-up of The Avengers

Oh, Mum, what did you do?

We all have childhood memories that we think leave a long-lasting effect. My brother and I were distraught when we came home from school one day to find my Mum had had a clear-out and decided to get rid of a huge pile of original Marvel comics…. Now, of course, they would probably be worth a fortune. So I credit that event with two things:

• my loyalty to the Marvel brand and
• my reluctance to throw anything away.

The genius of Marvel Comics’s Stan Lee was that he drew on the 1960s developing pop-psychology to present to teenagers a compelling escapist fantasy of legendary wish fulfilment. The comics spoke directly and emotionally to fans who felt marginalised, like Peter Parker in Spiderman. Stan Lee even addressed the reader from within the stories, asides just like in Shakespearean comedy. Stan Lee seemed like a childhood friend, so it’s a great joy to see him pop up in Marvel film cameos. I remember the first “club" I belonged to – Friends of Ol’ Marvel or FOOM – I wonder how many people, like me, kept hold of the club magazine….?

Arrested development?

How come I’m hooked on Shakespeare but I also love the X-Men, Spiderman, Thor, the Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer and The Avengers? Is my development so arrested that I can’t distinguish between Quicksilver (in the X-Men) and Hamlet (in Hamlet)? Both Quicksilver and Hamlet have father issues…. And the underlying theme of the X-Men is the same as one of the strands in Hamlet – the outsider trying to:

• fight for personal and political justice
• work out his own destiny and
• control the impulse to revenge….

Searching for father

Eclectic Tastes: The Bible, Shakespeare, Marvel….

Definition of Eclectic: not following one set of principles, ideas or systems but using many parts of different ones.

An eclectic person is someone with catholic, broad-ranging and all-inclusive tastes; someone who sees no difference between “high” culture and “popular” culture, “elegant” style and “vulgar” style. I think that’s me. I think I have eclectic tastes. Yes, I love Shakespeare, but I also love the Marvel Universe and will happily watch a superhero film the same day as reading Measure for Measure. As evidenced in the images below I think of Shakespeare as an action hero and I see nothing incongruous about Sacha Goldberger's outfits for a few of the Marvel characters. 

Reading is Reading is Reading

My appreciation of Marvel characters preceded my Mum’s notorious clearout of old comics. You see, no-one, throughout my childhood, ever told me what to read or watch. Nothing was ever censored. Picking up an encyclopedia or The Bible or The Complete Works of Shakespeare or Butler's Lives of Saints (the books on the shelf next to my Dad's chair) - they all felt the same, to me, as picking up the latest edition of Fantastic or Terrific or The Mighty World of Marvel (the UK versions of Marvel comics.) (Click the links on the titles for a trip down memory lane if you remember these comics.) I’m glad I have eclectic tastes. There are so many more things to enjoy…. Excelsior!

 

The grand old Duke of York

City walls of York
The walls of York began as an earthen and wooden stockade surrounding Eboracum (the Roman name for York.) Stone sections were added during the Roman occupation of Britain and a few of these remnants are still visible. During the centuries of Anglo-Saxon and Viking York (Eoferwic and Jorvik) it is likely that the walls were patched up in places but generally left to the weather’s ravages as the city focused on Christianity and Trading. During medieval times, though, when York became the York we know today, the walls were enlarged and reinforced and it is mostly these walls that have been renovated enough to walk on when you visit the city in 2016.

Barley Hall

York has a formidable distinction of being a thriving contemporary city (with its forward-thinking EU Remain-voting populace.) It is also a place that exploits its past for the tourist pound, but in a mostly respectful (and academic) fashion. Barley Hall is a prime example of the potential for forging new economic possibilities from a building that was about to be demolished – until the archaeologists realised how much of the original medieval structure was still intact under the layers of additions and alterations. In a recent visit I enjoyed a vivid display of the costumes from the BBC’s adaptation of Hilary Mantell’s Wolf Hall. Even without the headline-displays Barley Hall is evocative of a distant past that, in some ways, reveals itself to be unnervingly similar to today, even though swans and peacocks rarely feature on 21st century dining tables.

O tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide!

I’ve always loved York since learning at a young age that the castle nearest my childhood home in Wakefield, Sandal Castle, was the site of the nursery rhyme

Oh, the grand old Duke of York!
He had 10,000 men.
He marched them up to the top of the hill
And he marched them down again….

Tragically, of course, the grand old Duke of York also had the blood of his son, Edmund, smeared over his face by Margaret of Anjou, the wife of Henry VI and effectively the commander of the Lancastrian army at Sandal Castle during the Wars of the Roses. To add further humiliation Margaret placed a mock paper crown on the Duke of York’s head before slaughtering him and removing his head to be hoisted on a pike above Micklegate Bar in the city of York. Is all that true? It’s not in the nursery rhyme, that’s for sure, but Shakespeare has it covered in Henry VI Part Three. Ah, the good old days….

Margaret of Anjou kills the Duke of York (in Shakespeare's version) at Sandal Castle, Wakefield

Losing yourself and finding yourself

As the late MP Jo Cox said

“…. we are far more united and have far more in common with each other than things that divide us.”

Victoria Hall, Saltaire, Saturday July 2nd 2016

• If you were there, thank you for coming.
• If you were invited and couldn’t come, get in touch soon to arrange a catch up.
• If you weren’t invited and would've liked to've come, sorry for not being included in the final list (strict budget, ya know, now we’re retired), but please get in touch soon to arrange a catch up (if you like.)
• If you weren’t invited and wouldn’t've wanted to come anyway, it’s perfectly understandable – we’re not party animals, really.
• If you’ve no idea who we are, enjoy the pictures anyway. The text below is a transcription of the speeches that were made after the lovely meal by Yorkshire caterers, GFS (click here for GFS information.)

Victoria Hall, Saltaire

What Tony said….

The seeds of our 30th wedding anniversary party were sown in April and May 2015 when we attended the weddings of our nieces Laura to Aaron and Gemma to Ollie. It struck us that getting people together to celebrate was a great idea. Family, colleagues, friends....

When we married in 1986 Sally’s Mum and Dad told us how much we could spend on the wedding (£500) and, if there was any change from the costs of the wedding, we could spend it on furniture for our first house. We therefore had a small “do” back in 1986 – and today’s “do” is to make up for our stinginess back then….









Here today on 2nd July 2016 we have

• family and friends from two continents in the room – Europe and America
• friends from Manchester where we met
• friends visiting from the Midlands and London
• colleagues from education and the national health service
• family from Harrogate
• family and friends from Wakefield and Bradford where we were born.

There are people in the room who have recently experienced fire, illness and floods so we hope, later in the evening, you all follow natural human instincts and set aside troubles by dancing to the The Baby Blues all the way from London….

A big part of my childhood was reading a book in the corner and listening to my Mum nattering about this and that to Auntie Clare or to Auntie Mary; all telling tales about family members, present and past, neighbours and friends, who said what to who and why. Part of my childish mind enjoyed the gossip and part of it relished being a bookworm.

Shakespeare's Complete Works table: Laura, Aaron, Ollie, Gemma, Julie, Jannine, Russ, Marco

I have three older brothers and we four brothers each get more girly as we get younger. My eldest brother is macho and scary; my next two brothers are increasingly feminine and weepy; and I’m probably the girliest of all. My favoured reading was never Roy of the Rovers or Biggles.  I preferred X-Men, Spiderman and Thor or, when I was listening to the matriarchs gossiping, I was usually reading cousin Ann’s copy of Bunty at Auntie Claire’s house.

So when we looked for a theme for this anniversary party, Sally and I went out for dinner last year and tried to choose books that meant a great deal to us, either jointly or individually. Every table was named for a favourite book.

Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby table: Ann, Terry, Lisa, Daniel, Mary C, Albert

• Nicholas Nickleby – Charles Dickens’s story was the first theatre trip that we jointly thought was fantastic – the RSC touring to Manchester’s Palace Theatre
• Anne Tyler’s Breathing Lessons is the story of a middle-aged couple on a road trip reflecting on the poignant everyday details of their lives
• living in Bradford we each chose a Brontë novel: Sally chose Charlotte’s thunderingly feminist Jane Eyre and I picked Emily’s gothically stormy Wuthering Heights 
• Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice was an easy choice because of its exquisite romance and mischievous comedy
• I picked TH White’s Once and Future King because it portrays all our hopes and ambitions even when times are tough and life’s journey is a struggle
• Sally picked Henry Marsh’s Do No Harm, the compassionate but horribly honest medical memoir, which I confess I nearly stopped reading during Chapter 3 because of the graphic description of neurosurgery
• Shakespeare’s Complete Works had to be one of our choices since so much of my life has been spent exploring its messy bottomless pit
• And, finally, Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird gives us hope that the world can be a better place

Henry Marsh's Do No Harm table: Nick D, Veronica, Angela, Derek, Judy, Steve

And, for those who don’t know, sitting on our table is a special friend from America, Kerry Madden-Lunsford who has (literally) touched Harper Lee. And has written a biography of that great lady. So in the not too distant future we hope to get a tour of the Monroeville courtroom which inspired the setting for To Kill A Mockingbird. Make friends with Kerry and get yourself invited!

Charlotte Brontë's Jane Eyre table: Jane, Kevin H, Alison, Kim, Ben, Sarah, Gail, Kevin B

Reading has given us great pleasure over the years and is a key part of our lives now and in the foreseeable future. I love the expression – “you can lose yourself in a good book.” I have come to think that you “find yourself” in a good book too. In the same way you can “lose yourself” in your family and friends and “find yourself” there too.

Thirty years ago I lost myself in Sally, but that’s where I’ve found myself too. Our best achievement has been producing our two daughters, but for now, I want to thank Sally for the details of what you are seeing and experiencing – 99% of everything that’s good about today has been arranged tirelessly by my Pearly partner, please raise a glass to Dr Sally!

Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice table: Juliet, Mark, Jack, Amy, Tom, Caity, Adam

What Sally said….

When we got married 30 years ago next Tuesday (July 5th) my dad (Ray) made a short speech. Tony spoke. And then a good friend, Meera, looked me in the eye from her spot near the ‘top table’ and said “you next, Sally.” I replied “I’ve got nothing to say” but that was wrong, because those who know me well know that I always have something to say! I’ve regretted that moment in a small way since then, so here’s my chance to put it right.

Anne Tyler's Breathing Lessons table: Graeme, Nick S, Sue, Brian, Emma, Tim

I’ve never been much of a party animal, more of an outgoing introvert, but seeing everyone here today is so wonderful, I get why people have big parties. It’s so amazing to see all the people we love, all the people who’ve been important to us in our lives – family, colleagues and friends – all together in one place. Thank you all for coming. I hope you enjoy yourselves and please dance later.

This might be a bit of a downer, but will you all join me and raise a toast to absent friends and family? For me, I’ll be toasting my brilliant Mum and Dad, and Tony’s lovely Mum!

TH White's The Once and Future King table: Jo, Marion, Becky, Marc, Chris, Teresa, Mick, Jess

What Graeme said….

I think that if we were to do a quick poll of all the people who know Sally and Tony, asking what was the most important thing to them, we’d get a pretty unanimous response of “Family.” So for those of us here who don’t have now, or haven’t had at some point, the surnames Allard or Johnson, I like to think that today we can call ourselves honorary Allards or Johnsons.

Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights table: Emily, Alex, Harriet, Basit, Janet, Michael, Amy L, Matt B

When I think back to when I first met Tony, we were both being interviewed for what we believed to be the same job…. But that’s a whole other story! Anyway he was a fresh-faced young man of not much more than 30 (and I still had some hair!) – and he was just returning to full-time work having spent a year at home looking after baby Emily in order that Sally could establish herself in her career as a doctor, soon to be a popular GP.

Anyway I knew this was a friendship that was going to last, as we shared so many beliefs and ideals. So it wasn’t long before myself and Nick met all the family and we have, like so many of us here today, not just been passive observers over the years, but have felt like part of the Allard-Johnsons. We’ve watched Emily and Harriet grow up and become the wonderful, intelligent, socially adept, politically astute young women that are here now. And we have been involved in their lives in so many ways – personally and professionally – in the same way they have been involved in ours.

One of my measures of friendship is who I would call in an emergency…. I hope I never have to make that call, but your numbers have been at the top of my speed dial list for a very long time!

I think that you all exemplify something that the recently departed Muhammed Ali once said:

“Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It’s not something you learn in school. But if you haven’t learned the meaning of friendship, you haven’t really learned anything.”

You lot redefine the distinction between family and friend and maybe this is because these words of Charlotte Bronte’s from The Professor are the maxim by which you conduct your relationships, both with family and friends:

“Let respect be the foundation, affection the first floor, love the superstructure.”

And it is because of that respect, affection and love that you have shown all of us here over the years that I’m going to finish with yet another nicked quotation, this time from Maya Angelou (after all, these women say it so much better than I ever could!):

“My wish for you is that you continue. Continue to be who and how you are, to astonish a mean world with your acts of kindness.”

So Sally, Tony, thank you so much for today for this act of kindness and, Sally, I do hope that it is proving to be the perfect day that you were longing for (and I’ll try not to spoil it by making too much of an ass of myself on the dance floor later!)

Harper Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird table: Tony, Sally, Maggie, John, Michele, Mary S, Kiffen, Kerry

Cheers, to Sally and Tony, and to one and all!