… and I’m horizonal.
My feet hurt.
For most of the final four or five hours of the wedding I was either dancing or sitting outside letting myself cool down before more dancing. Glad I can still do it, even though the drop in stamina is noticeable from the last time I was at a Scottish wedding. I’m not as fit as I used to be. That can be solved.
Happily I had great dancing partners in the ceilidh. I was in the same Barclay Hunting Tartan as the groom. It’s a mark of this branch of the family that we all use the hunting as dress because the dress tartan looks like a wasp drowned in your piccalilli. I met some fun people and we did some energetic dances and overheated and it was a glorious thing. The last few family reunions have been sad ones. Happy to have a happy occasion.
“I’m the oldest man in this branch of the family now,” my brother Rupert mournfully confided in me. Oof. They’re all gone. Jamie too, my eldest brother, as much an elf as a human, working wood and making music. They were well remembered though. And as I walked into the wedding a bit late in my sunglasses with a wonky bow tie one very old man exclaimed “Norman!” at me, my father’s name. He quickly remembered the passage of time… I felt a mixture of pride and sadness to be mistaken for my dear old dad. After all I was wearing his kilt that he rather sadly and formally gave to me right at the end of his life when I had a wedding to attend. He had taken it out to it the very end of the leather strap and made a new hole there. It used to sit a little large on me if let out to that hole. Now I needed every inch of room. “Normally I’d take you and fit you with a kilt, but this one has seen some good times and it wants to keep on having them.” It has seen some parties with me. Maybe one day I’ll pass it on to someone. I’ve still got some dancing to go though.
There’s a vein of incisive awkward kind stubborn mischief running through the family. Friends of one of us will often know how to quickly be friends with others. I found easy conversation with Hugo’s friends, and easy dancing too.
One unfamiliar thing I did was to stop drinking once I was no longer eating. Someone had opened a bar tab so I could have gotten hammered, but I danced and drank water and occasional sugary things and when it felt like time to go I felt pretty clear headed. I’m surprised at myself.
Off to bed now in my wee apartment. Gotta send a self tape tomorrow somehow. Eek.
AlBarclay 