Screens

 I was sitting in front of my computer this morning thinking, "I'm tired of looking at screens" - so I switched it off.

What we think of as reality is already a screen (see Plato's cave etc) so why am I placing another screen between myself and it?

What shall I do instead? How about looking out the window?

As it happens I'm writing this somewhat later on a train. Lots to see out the window once I type the final full stop and put the screen back in my pocket.

A Spring Wedding

 They do a good wedding at Hendon Town Hall (where Mrs Thatcher of disputed memory made her first speech as Prime Minister). Firstly it's a handsome building- designed in the pre-Renaissance style (according to wikipedia) by a minor late Victorian architect- with big windows to let the light in on the Borough's business- and portraits of former mayors and mayoresses filling the walls like a tide that's always coming in and never going out. Secondly they provide ritual- with the bride making a proper entrance to matrimonial music- something that wasn't on offer when I last got married- in Oldham registry office- thirty odd years ago. Thirdly the registrar was pleasantly human and behaved like she was exercising a ministry and not just performing an official function.

It was Sandra and Hamdy's wedding. She's Brazilian, he's Egyptian. Guests were Brazilian, Egyptian, Polish, British. There weren't too many of us and we all fitted round the long table at the Bald Faced Eagle in East Finchley, sitting by a white blossom tree under a big skylight with the spring sunshine pouring down on us...

Emotions are better implied, I think, than described- because words are heavy things and emotions are gossamer, but I certainly had emotions. What I felt- as I can best express it- is a connection to something very large and glorious....