Almost up to present day…

In the couple weeks after Krakow, Juliet and I spent a few days a Farley (wandered through thunderstorms, ate lots of food, visited Cliveden, mansion where Profumo scandal occured), I got my Nigerian visa after a week worth of attempts, and then I started work at the FT (succinct description in previous post…basically boring and therefore I have time to write these entries).

Two weekends ago we went to Juliet’s cousin’s wedding, which was nice enough. Some ghoulish people, some perfectly nice people. I didn’t really meet that many anyway, because I spent most of my time with her. It was held in a beautiful country estate and took three (!) days – one Jewish ceremony, billed as the ‘intimate’ event (only 50 people), one Christian ceremony (500+ people), and then brunch the next day (which Juliet and I skipped out on and visited stonehedge instead).

Some drunken antics involved, including orchestrating a table place switch, then chickening out, then getting it all okayed above board. Some dancing (poorly). Absolutely incredible fireworks display – by far the most impressive I’ve ever seen…

The Christian ceremony I found vaguely offensive, in that it was very chauvinist – especially since it was juxtaposed the gender-equal jewish ceremony that occurred the day before. Bride being ‘given away’ by her father, speeches from father, best man, etc. Fucking hell, I’m not going to be given away by anyone, and I’m not planning on receiving a bride like a sack of potatoes from her father. The easy answer is ‘oh, it’s just traditional ceremony and meaningless’ but in that case ditching it has no meaning either. The truth is that it does have symbolic significant, and therefore should be opposed.