An Unforgettable Day

My elder son was married on Easter Day in the Chapel of Trinity College, Cambridge. The weather was kind to us. For the previous week it had been chilly in Cumbria, and I was concerned about the female participants in flimsy summer outfits: I needn't have worried - the sun shone all day. Here are a few photos:

Man and Wife

Leaving the Chapel

Young guests playing 'tag' around the Great Court Fountain (taken from the Hall)

Bride and Groom at the Wedding Breakfast in the 17th Century Great Hall - presided over by Henry VIII (a copy of the Holbein original)
The first dance

What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined together to strengthen each other in all labour, to minister to each other in all sorrow,to share with each other in all gladness,to be one with each other in the silent unspoken memories?
after George Eliot

A lone bridesmaid wanders across twilit Great Court - the end of a wonderful day!

Wearing White for Eastertide

Loveliest of trees, the cherry now
Is hung with bloom along the bough,

And stands about the woodland ride
Wearing white for Eastertide,

Now, of my threescore years and ten,
Twenty will not come again,
And take from seventy springs a score,
It only leaves me fifty more.

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room,
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.
A.E.Housman

Spring in my Cumbrian garden. Not cherry, but amelanchier - and in a few fleeting days the blossom will be gone; already it is littering the lawn with its confetti.

And under the tree, self-seeding forget-me-nots revel in their profusion.

An Easter Story

The Arrest of Christ. Fra Angelico

When they were small, my two sons attended a Church of England primary school, so were familiar with stories from the Bible. One day near Easter, I found them acting out a story they had heard at school. I gathered that it was a scene from the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, as it involved a lot of jumping on and off the sofa shouting, and waving ‘swords’ (plastic rulers)

I feel the message had been lost somewhere along the line, as after a while I heard the youngest wail,

‘That's it. I'm not going to be Jesus any more’ (He threw down his 'sword')

‘I want to be a goody’

Happy Easter!