Through a glass darkly – 142

Susie and I were married on Saturday, January 11th, 1975. It seems a long time ago. I had just started working in Paris for Oxford University Press, and had travelled up from London on the train the previous day. Susie had given up teaching in Oxford the previous summer, and had been living at home for a few months and working for Richard Demarco, the Edinburgh artist and promoter of the performing and visual arts. The night before the wedding I had a drink with Clive in Lesley’s Bar on Causewayside, the last time that I was there. Peter, my younger brother and best man, was travelling from somewhere in Germany, fell asleep and missed a late night train connection, and had to be collected from Waverley Station early on the morning of the wedding after coming up from London on the sleeper.

Weddings were much more basic in those days. We were married in Mayfield Church by Bill McDonald at 12.00 midday. The organist surprised himself by being able to play When I’m Sixty Four while we signed the register. There was a reception at a hotel up towards Fairmilehead which is no longer there. Susie and I were away in time to catch the 4.00pm train back down to London, where we were staying overnight on the way to Annecy. John Akast, a friend from primary school, and more recently a High Court judge, joined us on the train. I suppose he thought that we would like to have someone to talk to ?

On Saturday, our 50th anniversary, we went out to breakfast. Susie had carefully chosen a bar/restaurant in the former Royal Infirmary, now redeveloped as The Quarter Mile. But their ovens were down. So we ate in a Turkish cafe across the road. [Formerly Ollie Bongo’s for cognoscenti of Edinburgh cafes.] The waiter was a third year Computer Science student from Istanbul. I told him that I was first in Istanbul, as a hitch-hiker, in 1964. He told me that his father was born in 1965. Later we were in Marks and Spencer’s, and a nice girl at the check-out gave us a bunch of tulips.

We were in Mayfield Church again yesterday morning. Except that it is now becoming Newington Trinity. The first hymn, by Timothy Dudley-Smith, was highly appropriate:

Lord, for the years your love has kept and guided,
urged and inspired us, cheered us on our way,
sought us and saved us, pardoned and provided:
Lord of the years, we bring our thanks today.

I wore my wedding suit, a double-breasted, burgundy velvet suit with slightly flared trousers [from Simpsons in Piccadilly]. It attracted some comment, and I was assured that I could get a good price for it on Vintage. “Don’t give it to a charity shop”, people said. And after church we enjoyed an excellent lunch with eight close friends at Blonde on St Leonard’s Street.

Susie and I have been assembling some photos. Here are a few photos from down the years. There are hundreds of others !

Honeymoon, near Annecy, January 1975

Dinner, Grand Canal, Venice, summer 1975

Woodstock garden, 1984

ICS summer chaplaincy, Quimper, 2008

Retirement, Edinburgh garden, 2015

Snake Canyon, ? Colorado, 2016

Kyiv, Christmas Day, 2021

Best wishes for 2025 to all [both ?] my readers.

January 2025