Nice day for a white wedding.

TRW thinks she may be using the  the expression ‘I think I’m in love’ just a bit too much these days.   I  blame the European double cheek kiss; it’s made us way too touchy feely!   It’s now been used regarding the new fridge freezer but so would you if you saw it; I’ll introduce you next time you’re round.  Then there was  the time it was applied to the newly buff Jake Gyllenhaal in the film ‘Prince of Persia’.  If you’re not agreeing with me you haven’t seen the  film.  Okay, those reasons have about as much depth as a Jeffrey Archer novel but I really can apply it in all honesty to the place we stayed at just recently.  Mike’s youngest sister Sue got married last month.  It was in Northampton, our old stomping ground, so not only were we looking forward to being at the wedding, we were hoping to catch up with old friends as well.  TRW is a terminal weather pessimist and wondered if the newly acquired summer coat needed to be upgraded to the kind of thing Ellen MacArthur favoured when sailing off Cape of Good Hope.  On the day it was so hot we were forced to shed layers revealing acres of pasty skin – if it was on a colour chart it would be English grey.

The wedding went flawlessly.  Held in the church we once attended, it was lovely to see so many familiar faces and it had that expectant atmosphere that always precedes the appearance of the bride.  Sue looked beautiful.  Actually, she looked radiant thinking about it.  She wanted all her young nephews and nieces to participate in the wedding and as a consequence she was escorted down the aisle by six bridesmaids.  Sam and his cousin Martin and Sue’s stepson-to-be all got to wear top hats with their morning suits.  The hats somehow became the motif of the wedding with many of us wearing one in a photo.  Sam wore his at a jaunty angle on the back of the head in the style of the Artful Dodger; we were at a wedding, he appeared to be auditioning for a West End show.

The evening reception was held at the hotel we were staying at.  Sue had wanted her family (and there are lots of us) to be together, to have ‘the run’ of a country house for the weekend.  Just outside Northampton in the rural countryside is The Broomhill Hotel and it was love at first sight.  It’s a Victorian manor house that has belonged to different families through the years.  All the rooms are individually designed  and furnished and because everyone in the entire place was related  we got to see what everyone else’s room was like.  Some were staying in the top of the house that must have once  been the servant’s quarters  and there were two staircases, one of which must have been ‘servants only’ which just set the whole house in context.  It was ‘Upstairs Downstairs’ for real.  All the dark wood was polished to a sheen and every so often came the faint whiff of wood smoke that spoke of roaring fires keeping the occupants warm in winter.  The posh stairs swept you past reception through the drawing room and out to the garden.

TRW is no gardener, in fact if pushed would confess to an urge to slab over anything green with fronds on.  But this place with its miniature fountain and wild rabbits on the old tennis courts, felt like Brideshead Lite.  Just beyond the garden was a scene of pastoral tranquillity: a field full of sheep and lambs which are entrancing to watch and TRW swore she would never eat lamb again.  (This statement came back to haunt only a few hours later with dawning realisation that the lamb on the menu had probably been springing around the field earlier that week.  It’s rather humbling to think about and for the umpteenth time TRW had to think upon the half hearted attempts at being a veggie.)

But back to the vista from the gardens.  Beyond the sheep field the land rolls down into a valley patchworked with rapeseed and, just visible, another rather grand looking house.  All you could hear were lambs calling to mothers and birdsong.  Blissful.  TRW is convinced she’d be a nicer person if she lived there but so far has no master plan to move in!  It has become a ‘happy place’ for TRW, the place that gurus and counsellors and no doubt Woody Allen urge us to find.  The place in one’s  mind to escape to when the stresses and strains of life become too much.   The Broomhill is another little piece of heaven on earth, another place to see  that ‘the heavens (and earth) declare the glory of God’  and  to experience His peace and it’s all just a thought away.  So yes in love really, but for all the right reasons.

Hot off the press.  You can catch a flavour of this on You Tube under ‘Broomhill Reception’!