glittering bits

I went to my first wedding

when I was about five.   I remember my dress because it was a beautiful green and had pockets. I always loved pockets. A friend of my mother’s was getting married, it was not a formal affair but I remember hats and a bit of late forties/early fifties glamour – my father looking splendid in a suit, my mother with her hair up and a borrowed fur cape. 

The bride Mary and her sister Cicely had Pekinese dogs – Cicely’s was small and snappy but Mary had Billy, the biggest of the breed (Sun, Emperor and Sleeve) and he walked with feline dignity, seeming to float on endless waves of soft black, grey and honey coloured fur.  He was gentle and he was beautiful.

After the ceremony, lunch was in a country pub,

there were trees and flowers in the garden and I wasn’t a bridesmaid, I was just a little girl, so I could wander about and look at things safely, while the grownups laughed and talked.  It was a very happy occasion – and then – there was confetti.

It was white and gold and silver, bells and heart shapes, brides and grooms, horse shoes and silver slippers, boots and tiny white roses.  And you tossed it up in the air, where the sun caught the metallic bits. I kept two pieces in my treasure box for years. We did not think of biodegradable then, but it would have been hard to dispose of because of the gilding.  So it was swept aside and allowed to disperse over time, thank you wind, thank you rain.     

And this is where it came from. Food was not always easy to come by and methods for the preservation of food developed over time. So to throw grain or rice

or small dried fruits was a generous gesture which probably existed from a very long time ago, when weddings were much more of a business arrangement, and the community was more likely to be celebrating a good harvest, auspicious planets or evading local war.

Over time two ideas fused, to offer your best to the gods and to offer your best to the young that they might be fortunate – and the Italians (of course) came up with comfits – small almond cakes – and the words travelled as language does, went through some hoops – and confetti became what we understand it to be now.

Some of the meetings I have are as brief and windborn as confetti. And they shine.  Others might be less aware than I but I still hang on to the powers of observation which would make me the journalist I aspire to be.  And to notice was revenge for short sight and the specs I have worn since I was eight.

I’ve been pretty unwell with the aftercare package of medicines (see annalog/at a stroke) and so going out is treasured, even in the grot of the big city.

And I am so grateful that I am a successfully extroverted introvert, that occasional rebuffs are just that (nobody’s right all the time), that I get the best of people. I sat next to a veiled woman

on the bus, I’d judge by her hands and her body probably in her fifties.  And you know how somebody can move their clothes aside and it makes you feel you were quite wrong to sit there?  She did the opposite.  She moved her skirts and I said “Thank you” as I sat down.  She moved herself over and said something which sounded like “ You don’t have to sit on the edge, look – there’s room.” So I moved a fraction and putting my hand on her arm, said” You’re just like my mother.  You’re organising me  …” and she grinned – I saw the veil move – with real pleasure and said something I couldn’t catch.  You could feel the warmth.  When we got off the bus, she did everything except stroke me.

And then Charmian (not her real name) whom I have met twice in Waitrose and had made a point of thanking because of the constancy of the store through pandemic and strikes and all, walked up and hugged me.   Am I soppy?  Sure.  But those tiny things shine, like my remembered confetti, glittering bits.