Yeah… Sorry about that. Things have been a little bit hectic just recently. You know how it is, your fiancée moves to town, you plan a wedding in a foreign country, switch churches, appear in a stage show and look for new job and before you know it, you’ve gone two months without uploading so much as an irreverent haiku. It happens to the best of us. And also to me.
So naturally I decided the best time to rectify the situation would be a week before my wedding. It’s not like I’ve got a million other things I’m supposed to be doing. But Kim’s off at a code black top secret dress fitting, so I’m home alone with the dog and my laptop. I tried playing chess with the dog, but she beat me in twenty three moves, so I’m blogging instead.
So I’m in America again, camped out with Kim’s family in Ohio, ready for another cross-country adventure to Ocean City, NJ for the big day. Ten day from now. This is nuts. I knew this year was going to go fast, but I really don’t think jumping straight from January to August without asking for permission was entirely justified. Still, here we are.
Order of service is coming along. Playlist is getting there, and now I;m thping with mey eyes clsaed becyase Kim is walking in with her fress.
Sorry about that.
I should go write something more useful. Like vows or something. But take heart in the meantime, blogosphere. I haven’t forgotten you.
I’m just completely neglecting you.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
Showing posts with label Weddings. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Weddings. Show all posts
01 August 2014
14 January 2013
A Hot Time in Tasmania
Australia has been in the grip of a truly nasty heat wave this week. “Aaaargh,” go the southerners, “Hooray!” go the climate change fanatics and “on holidays” goes Garry.
I was heading to Tassie, which would normally be a location for jumpers, sachets of pre-mix hot chocolate and a good book or two. But this time, in the wake of the hottest day Hobart had ever had, I was pumped and ready for a super southern summer holiday.
It was thirteen degrees when I got off the plane in Launceston. Tasmania can’t even get a bloody heat wave right.
Before my grandmother died, my family used to spend a lot of time on the North coast of Tassie. I remember it fondly as a great place to walk around aimlessly in the cool weather, eat lunch and read books. But this time we weren’t here for Christmas in my grandmother’s unit on the North West coast. We were here for my uncle’s wedding in Scamander on the east side.
Those East side Tasmanians are a different bunch. They come across as the quiet, rural type, but beneath the half asleep exterior lurks the beating heart of an angry Thylacine. That feisty little Tasmanian Tiger is also half asleep, and extinct to go with it, but that’s not the point. The point is…
…
The wedding was at two o’clock in the function room at the Scamander Social Club. At 1:30 in the afternoon they opened the bar, which promised to make for an interesting afternoon. Just after two o’clock my auntie-to-be arrived on a golf cart and walked into the hall to the rousing cheers of the rest of the assembled guests, which was basically everyone in town.
My ordained Anglican priest of a great aunt performed a suitably short ceremony, and then it was back to the drinking and photo taking and drinking and barbequing and drinking and I think there was a band at some point and drinking. In traditional Tassie style we all ate and drank enough to get us through two weeks and took three plates of left overs home each to go with it.
I only had a couple of days in Tassie. The day after the wedding the fine weather gave up and it came over all cloudy and rainy, so we stayed inside and watched the cricket. But overall I was impressed with Scamander. It was everything a sleepy little fishing village should be.
If only I liked fishing.
Garry with 2 Rs
I was heading to Tassie, which would normally be a location for jumpers, sachets of pre-mix hot chocolate and a good book or two. But this time, in the wake of the hottest day Hobart had ever had, I was pumped and ready for a super southern summer holiday.
It was thirteen degrees when I got off the plane in Launceston. Tasmania can’t even get a bloody heat wave right.
Before my grandmother died, my family used to spend a lot of time on the North coast of Tassie. I remember it fondly as a great place to walk around aimlessly in the cool weather, eat lunch and read books. But this time we weren’t here for Christmas in my grandmother’s unit on the North West coast. We were here for my uncle’s wedding in Scamander on the east side.
Those East side Tasmanians are a different bunch. They come across as the quiet, rural type, but beneath the half asleep exterior lurks the beating heart of an angry Thylacine. That feisty little Tasmanian Tiger is also half asleep, and extinct to go with it, but that’s not the point. The point is…
…
The wedding was at two o’clock in the function room at the Scamander Social Club. At 1:30 in the afternoon they opened the bar, which promised to make for an interesting afternoon. Just after two o’clock my auntie-to-be arrived on a golf cart and walked into the hall to the rousing cheers of the rest of the assembled guests, which was basically everyone in town.
My ordained Anglican priest of a great aunt performed a suitably short ceremony, and then it was back to the drinking and photo taking and drinking and barbequing and drinking and I think there was a band at some point and drinking. In traditional Tassie style we all ate and drank enough to get us through two weeks and took three plates of left overs home each to go with it.
I only had a couple of days in Tassie. The day after the wedding the fine weather gave up and it came over all cloudy and rainy, so we stayed inside and watched the cricket. But overall I was impressed with Scamander. It was everything a sleepy little fishing village should be.
If only I liked fishing.
Garry with 2 Rs
03 December 2012
Wedding Jitters
So I’ve written before about my new hobby/job as an organist for hire. We had a big wedding at my church last weekend and I got approached for the job. It was a big Tongan wedding, but I had thought it might be a fairly laid back affair. And judging by the attitudes of the groomsmen, pastor and just about everyone else, I was dead right. But I wasn’t employed by any of them. I was employed by the groom’s mother. Oh my sweet dancing optometrist.
First of all: who in her right mind plans a wedding at two o’clock in the afternoon in Darwin in December in a church with no aircon? The groom’s mother was from Sydney, and might have been excused for not knowing what she was in for, but surely the bride or groom must have had some idea along the way that this was a really stupid idea. Apparently not.
A few weeks out from the big day the stage manager/mother of the groom sent me at list of music for me to learn. I didn’t mind putting a bit of extra work in, as its all an investment in being able to play them in the future for other weddings, but I did think four separate organ voluntaries for the bridal procession was pushing things a little bit. I managed to get them all up and running in time, including a setting of Ave Maria for the Groom’s mother herself to sing as the bride walked down the aisle.
The wedding rehearsal was a bit of a shambles. It must have taken us a dozen tries to get the bride to walk in at the just the right time between Mendelssohn and Bach. And then, after I’d sat up the night before making sure I could play the Bach well enough for soprano to sing along to convincingly, the stage manager/soprano/mother of the groom decided she didn’t like this key after all. I now had less than twenty four hours to relearn it transposed down by a fifth. Sopranos are soft. Lucky for her, I’m really quite something when it comes to throwing a half-arsed effort together at the last minute and disguising it as the real thing. We got there.
The wedding ceremony came at last. We were all there at two o’clock, some in traditional Tongan dress, others in the more contemporary Australian suit and tie. In any case, we were all sweating it out, hoping the ceremony would be fast and on time.
At about a quarter past two the groomsmen arrived. They wandered up and took their place at the front, and then realised that they had only brought one ring with them. They quickly dispatched someone to fetch the other one. The bride was due any minute.
They needn’t have worried. The bridesmaids didn’t arrive until about a quarter to three. I got the nod from the stage manager/groom’s mother and gave Pachelbel’s Canon a whirl. There were five bridesmaids but fortunately no-one really notices the difference if you play the last few bars of Pachelbel’s Canon over and over again; that’s kind of the point. Then the trumpeter came out and played a small fanfare, before marching down the aisle and waiting for the bride to step out so we could play Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. We all kept waiting. And waiting.
Eventually some relative or other came running down the side of the church to the groom’s mother and announced that the bride had disappeared. I played Pachelbel’s Cannon a few more times while we tried to figure out where she had gone. Apparently she’d had a last minute attack of cold feet and had taken a lap around the block in the car to get her head together. She finally reappeared and walked in to the Mendelssohn and the then Ave Maria. Only an hour late.
And then it was done. The ceremony itself took about twenty minutes. I tactfully declined an invitation to the reception: I’m told it went on for about five hours. I swear, one of these days I’m going to get my head around exactly what motivates the finer points of some of these wedding ceremonies.
But not today.
Garry with 2 Rs
First of all: who in her right mind plans a wedding at two o’clock in the afternoon in Darwin in December in a church with no aircon? The groom’s mother was from Sydney, and might have been excused for not knowing what she was in for, but surely the bride or groom must have had some idea along the way that this was a really stupid idea. Apparently not.
A few weeks out from the big day the stage manager/mother of the groom sent me at list of music for me to learn. I didn’t mind putting a bit of extra work in, as its all an investment in being able to play them in the future for other weddings, but I did think four separate organ voluntaries for the bridal procession was pushing things a little bit. I managed to get them all up and running in time, including a setting of Ave Maria for the Groom’s mother herself to sing as the bride walked down the aisle.
The wedding rehearsal was a bit of a shambles. It must have taken us a dozen tries to get the bride to walk in at the just the right time between Mendelssohn and Bach. And then, after I’d sat up the night before making sure I could play the Bach well enough for soprano to sing along to convincingly, the stage manager/soprano/mother of the groom decided she didn’t like this key after all. I now had less than twenty four hours to relearn it transposed down by a fifth. Sopranos are soft. Lucky for her, I’m really quite something when it comes to throwing a half-arsed effort together at the last minute and disguising it as the real thing. We got there.
The wedding ceremony came at last. We were all there at two o’clock, some in traditional Tongan dress, others in the more contemporary Australian suit and tie. In any case, we were all sweating it out, hoping the ceremony would be fast and on time.
At about a quarter past two the groomsmen arrived. They wandered up and took their place at the front, and then realised that they had only brought one ring with them. They quickly dispatched someone to fetch the other one. The bride was due any minute.
They needn’t have worried. The bridesmaids didn’t arrive until about a quarter to three. I got the nod from the stage manager/groom’s mother and gave Pachelbel’s Canon a whirl. There were five bridesmaids but fortunately no-one really notices the difference if you play the last few bars of Pachelbel’s Canon over and over again; that’s kind of the point. Then the trumpeter came out and played a small fanfare, before marching down the aisle and waiting for the bride to step out so we could play Mendelssohn’s Wedding March. We all kept waiting. And waiting.
Eventually some relative or other came running down the side of the church to the groom’s mother and announced that the bride had disappeared. I played Pachelbel’s Cannon a few more times while we tried to figure out where she had gone. Apparently she’d had a last minute attack of cold feet and had taken a lap around the block in the car to get her head together. She finally reappeared and walked in to the Mendelssohn and the then Ave Maria. Only an hour late.
And then it was done. The ceremony itself took about twenty minutes. I tactfully declined an invitation to the reception: I’m told it went on for about five hours. I swear, one of these days I’m going to get my head around exactly what motivates the finer points of some of these wedding ceremonies.
But not today.
Garry with 2 Rs
12 October 2012
Here Comes The Bride. In a Spaceship.
What is Garry? Stunt Linguist? Raconteur? Space Pirate? Freelance revolutionary? He is all these things, and none of them.
He’s also an organist for hire, apparently.
I’ve just got home from a gig playing organ for a wedding. It’s the second time in a couple of months that I’ve been hired to play for someone I didn’t know. It’s a nice little side project, and it means I get to call myself a professional musician. At least on a technicality.
I also got to play the super high tech digital organ at the catholic cathedral down the road from DMUC. I don’t mean any disrespect to the DMUC organ, which certainly gets the job done, and has been fighting with me a lot less of late. But to say that the DMUC instrument and the St. Mary’s instrument are both digital organs is a bit like saying that Garry with 2 Rs and Aaron Sorkin are both writers. It’s technically true, but in reality there’s no comparison. For one thing the St. Mary’s one cost about three times as much and has a whole extra keyboard. Also, while the DMUC auditorium has been carpeted and modernised and generally made more comfortable, St. Mary’s is still all polished concrete and panelling inside, so it reverberates like an echo chamber. That means when you open up all the stops and cut loose, you’re no longer just playing an organ; you’re playing the whole building. It’s pretty cool.
The strangest thing I’ve noticed about the last couple weddings I’ve played for is that the bride and groom have had no idea what music they wanted for the processional and recessional. One bride-to-be even told me to just pick whatever I wanted. I can’t imagine doing that, but then if it were me I’d probably have the music all programmed out weeks in advance, and then go looking at suits the day before. Each to his own, I guess. The couple I played for this afternoon apparently hadn’t even thought about it until I asked them. I told them my default offering is Purcell’s (Clarke’s) Trumpet Voluntary for the procession and Mendelssohn’s Wedding March for the walk out. Most people just agree to that to avoid admitting they don’t know what I’m talking about. That works for me.
Except that this time, just a week out from the service, the bride-to-be decided she’d like the overture from the Marriage of Figaro instead. And like an idiot I told her I’d learn it. I duly downloaded a copy of the sheet music and discovered it was fifteen pages long, and really difficult. Cue four straight nights of frantic practising and devious shortcut creation. In the end I managed to learn about the first three pages and the last page, and found a way to jump straight from one to the other. And fortunately it’s Mozart, so no-one could tell the difference. “Prestissimo” is your friend in this situation; go fast enough and it really doesn’t matter if you hit the right notes or not.
Well we got through alright in the end. The building helped a bit, reverberating over all the uneven quavers for me, and the friends and family seemed happy enough. The father-of-the-bride even came over and paid me in cash on the spot; slipped it to me in a gentlemanly handshake like some kind of mafia boss. That was awesome.
So yeah: I’m a free-lance organist now. And I’m building up quite a useful little repertoire
Songs that sound surprisingly good on the eight foot diapasons:
A Song of Freedom
Blessed Be Your Name
The Theme from Doctor Who
40 (The U2 version)
Bohemian Rhapsody
Aníron (Theme for Aragorn and Arwen)
The Theme from Star Trek Voyager
Highland Cathedral
Gollum’s Song
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
18 July 2012
A Week in Adelaide: Part 4 - The Big Day
So what else can I tell you about the wedding itself?
Well… both my sister and her newly acquired husband are fairly unconventional people. I mean, not in the sense of having extra limbs or anything, but in the sense of having a healthy taste for personal expressions that go slightly against the norm. Just little things, like having the church brightly festooned with balloons instead of flowers, or producing an order of service that had more in common with a Broadway show programme than a church bulletin, or carrying bouquets decorated with motifs ranging from horseshoes to daleks.
One convention that my sister was absolutely determined to eschew was the cliché of arriving late to the wedding. She was absolutely insistent that the wedding would start on time, and her well documented ability to get not only her own, but everyone else’s acts together when it was needed left us in no doubt that she could do it.
The groom and his associates were all in kilts. I really don’t know what would possess a Scotsman, let alone four Australians, to wear a kilt. But they did. Apparently my sister went to a great deal of effort to clandestinely arrange for the groom’s kilt to be made of the tartan appropriate to his clan, which had previously been declared unavailable. That was pretty cool. But they were still four guys in skirts.
When the bridesmaids arrived, twenty minutes late (didn’t matter too much, I just kept playing increasingly obscure variations on the Theme from Voyager), they were all dressed differently, with a dress style and colour that suited them, but each with the same kind of shawly scarfey thing made of … lamb’s wool? I don’t know. It was fluffy looking.
The bride wore a white dress.
There were the usual prayers and a sermon from the relatively young minister, who was new at doing weddings and appeared to be several times more nervous than the bride and groom. There was a reading from John's gospel, and then a bit from the writings of C.S. Lewis, all about what real love looks like. That was actually pretty awesome.
I don’t know much about Battlestar Galactica. That means I can’t really tell you why ending the congregational affirmation of the vows with a resounding “and so say we all” was awesome. But I’m assured it was, and I’m prepared to take the bridal party’s word for it just this once.
The primary objective accomplished, we adjourned to my aunt and uncle’s house, where we posed for a quadrillion photographs with every combination of family, extended family, distant relations and… who the hell is that guy? Fortunately being only in the family and not the wedding party itself, we were soon released to return home for a breather while the official party took off to take a quadrillion more photos at various spots around Adelaide which, while boring and snooty, is quite pretty in places.
The reception was at a … actually I don’t know what it was. It’s called Utopia. I think it’s a winery, or some sort of society gathering point in the foothills. It was a drinks and finger food affair, with a few very low key speeches, before the groom had some nice mulled wine and a pretty girl gave him a hat made out of a tree.
And before we knew it, they were off into the night, in a vintage car bound for a flight to New Zealand, leaving at least one party guest thinking to himself
“Holy crap my sister is married.”
Well… both my sister and her newly acquired husband are fairly unconventional people. I mean, not in the sense of having extra limbs or anything, but in the sense of having a healthy taste for personal expressions that go slightly against the norm. Just little things, like having the church brightly festooned with balloons instead of flowers, or producing an order of service that had more in common with a Broadway show programme than a church bulletin, or carrying bouquets decorated with motifs ranging from horseshoes to daleks.
One convention that my sister was absolutely determined to eschew was the cliché of arriving late to the wedding. She was absolutely insistent that the wedding would start on time, and her well documented ability to get not only her own, but everyone else’s acts together when it was needed left us in no doubt that she could do it.
The groom and his associates were all in kilts. I really don’t know what would possess a Scotsman, let alone four Australians, to wear a kilt. But they did. Apparently my sister went to a great deal of effort to clandestinely arrange for the groom’s kilt to be made of the tartan appropriate to his clan, which had previously been declared unavailable. That was pretty cool. But they were still four guys in skirts.
When the bridesmaids arrived, twenty minutes late (didn’t matter too much, I just kept playing increasingly obscure variations on the Theme from Voyager), they were all dressed differently, with a dress style and colour that suited them, but each with the same kind of shawly scarfey thing made of … lamb’s wool? I don’t know. It was fluffy looking.
The bride wore a white dress.
There were the usual prayers and a sermon from the relatively young minister, who was new at doing weddings and appeared to be several times more nervous than the bride and groom. There was a reading from John's gospel, and then a bit from the writings of C.S. Lewis, all about what real love looks like. That was actually pretty awesome.
I don’t know much about Battlestar Galactica. That means I can’t really tell you why ending the congregational affirmation of the vows with a resounding “and so say we all” was awesome. But I’m assured it was, and I’m prepared to take the bridal party’s word for it just this once.
The primary objective accomplished, we adjourned to my aunt and uncle’s house, where we posed for a quadrillion photographs with every combination of family, extended family, distant relations and… who the hell is that guy? Fortunately being only in the family and not the wedding party itself, we were soon released to return home for a breather while the official party took off to take a quadrillion more photos at various spots around Adelaide which, while boring and snooty, is quite pretty in places.
The reception was at a … actually I don’t know what it was. It’s called Utopia. I think it’s a winery, or some sort of society gathering point in the foothills. It was a drinks and finger food affair, with a few very low key speeches, before the groom had some nice mulled wine and a pretty girl gave him a hat made out of a tree.
And before we knew it, they were off into the night, in a vintage car bound for a flight to New Zealand, leaving at least one party guest thinking to himself
“Holy crap my sister is married.”
17 July 2012
A Week in Adelaide: Part 3 - Songs of Love
Take my heart, hand in hand
To where the sea and sunshine fall
Dance our feet here in the sand
Songs of love don’t need a sound
That’s an extract from Compliments of Gus’ song “Songs of Love Don’t Need a Sound,” from the “If This is the End” album. Steve and Rachel had asked if I could learn to play it and if Steve’s sister would sing it for the signing of the register. It’s a flowing piano ballad, which means that the recording of it gives Jared Haschek a chance to show off what a colossal freak on the piano he is. In a good way.
It also poses a set of interesting questions.
1) Exactly how was I supposed to do that?
2) How many metaphors can you mix up before your lyrics become completely obfuscated
3) If songs of love don’t need a sound, how come we needed a band for the wedding?
4) Why don’t people use the word obfuscated more often? It’s cool.
Yes… so this post is supposed to be about music for the big day. It hasn’t started well.
Music practice was on the Thursday night before the big day. Unfortunately the drummer couldn’t make it. Also none of us remembered to bring any copies of the music we were supposed to be practising. Church musicians for the win. It was all a little ad hoc, but that’s kind of how we roll.
The exception was the sister of the groom, who was absolutely insistent on delivering a polished, well-rehearsed performance. That’s a good thing, right? Anyway, that particular performance must have been the most prepared I’ve been for a song in a church service in about five years. I mean, we must have played it upwards of six times before doing it for real. It was pretty good.
Anyway, there’s another post coming about the wedding day in general, but as a teaser, here’s a copy of the musical programme for the day, as it happened. I’ll let you make of it what you will.
Incidental music before the service: Piano solo rendering of variations on the Theme from Star Trek: Voyager (surprisingly catchy)
Bridal procession: (recording) Abigail’s Song (from the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas Special)
First hymn: Great is Thy Faithfulness
Second hymn: Spirit Flowing Through Creation (I didn’t know this one before the wedding, but it was nice)
Signing of the Register: Songs of Love Don’t Need a Sound, by Compliments of Gus (We nailed it)
Recessional: Pipe Organ rendition of Song of Freedom from the finale of Doctor Who series 4 (or series 31, depending on your point of view)
Bridal Waltz: Theme from Jaws (not really)
Video message from the reception: reasonably intoxicated chorus of Songs of Love Don't need a Sound, before the camera died on us. We're awesome.
Song that was stuck in my head on the ride home: With You, Friends, by Skrillex (I don’t know why).
To where the sea and sunshine fall
Dance our feet here in the sand
Songs of love don’t need a sound
That’s an extract from Compliments of Gus’ song “Songs of Love Don’t Need a Sound,” from the “If This is the End” album. Steve and Rachel had asked if I could learn to play it and if Steve’s sister would sing it for the signing of the register. It’s a flowing piano ballad, which means that the recording of it gives Jared Haschek a chance to show off what a colossal freak on the piano he is. In a good way.
It also poses a set of interesting questions.
1) Exactly how was I supposed to do that?
2) How many metaphors can you mix up before your lyrics become completely obfuscated
3) If songs of love don’t need a sound, how come we needed a band for the wedding?
4) Why don’t people use the word obfuscated more often? It’s cool.
Yes… so this post is supposed to be about music for the big day. It hasn’t started well.
Music practice was on the Thursday night before the big day. Unfortunately the drummer couldn’t make it. Also none of us remembered to bring any copies of the music we were supposed to be practising. Church musicians for the win. It was all a little ad hoc, but that’s kind of how we roll.
The exception was the sister of the groom, who was absolutely insistent on delivering a polished, well-rehearsed performance. That’s a good thing, right? Anyway, that particular performance must have been the most prepared I’ve been for a song in a church service in about five years. I mean, we must have played it upwards of six times before doing it for real. It was pretty good.
Anyway, there’s another post coming about the wedding day in general, but as a teaser, here’s a copy of the musical programme for the day, as it happened. I’ll let you make of it what you will.
Incidental music before the service: Piano solo rendering of variations on the Theme from Star Trek: Voyager (surprisingly catchy)
Bridal procession: (recording) Abigail’s Song (from the 2010 Doctor Who Christmas Special)
First hymn: Great is Thy Faithfulness
Second hymn: Spirit Flowing Through Creation (I didn’t know this one before the wedding, but it was nice)
Signing of the Register: Songs of Love Don’t Need a Sound, by Compliments of Gus (We nailed it)
Recessional: Pipe Organ rendition of Song of Freedom from the finale of Doctor Who series 4 (or series 31, depending on your point of view)
Bridal Waltz: Theme from Jaws (not really)
Video message from the reception: reasonably intoxicated chorus of Songs of Love Don't need a Sound, before the camera died on us. We're awesome.
Song that was stuck in my head on the ride home: With You, Friends, by Skrillex (I don’t know why).
13 July 2012
A Week in Adelaide: Prelude
Long-time readers will by now be well acquainted with the rather strained relationship I have with the city of Adelaide. New readers can catch up here. And non-readers can go and… yeah I really don’t know where I was going with that.
It’s full of my father’s side of the extended family, and more recently my own immediate family and I love them all dearly. But the city itself, its culture and its attitude really rub me the wrong way. So every time I go there, which is usually once about every eighteen months or so depending on what family occasions are coming up, I always come away with some experiences which are great, some which are rubbish, and some which are just plain weird.
My most recent trip was no exception. Ostensibly I was there to help prepare for and celebrate my sister’s wedding, which would have been a surreal enough experience on its own. However, just a week before the wedding my grandmother passed away after a long battle with … just about everything. It was a release for her and a sad relief for everyone else, but not really on anyone’s list of top ten wedding preparations.
So there we were, in a house full of aunties attempting to facilitate both joy and grief in the same week. In Adelaide. This is the story of one man’s journey through the strangest week in other people’s lives.
Garry with 2 Rs
P.S. As an extra nugget of CTC trivia, this is my 200th Far From Home/Cum Tacent Clament post. It seems somehow appropriate that I have spent it whinging about Adelaide. Make of that what you will.
It’s full of my father’s side of the extended family, and more recently my own immediate family and I love them all dearly. But the city itself, its culture and its attitude really rub me the wrong way. So every time I go there, which is usually once about every eighteen months or so depending on what family occasions are coming up, I always come away with some experiences which are great, some which are rubbish, and some which are just plain weird.
My most recent trip was no exception. Ostensibly I was there to help prepare for and celebrate my sister’s wedding, which would have been a surreal enough experience on its own. However, just a week before the wedding my grandmother passed away after a long battle with … just about everything. It was a release for her and a sad relief for everyone else, but not really on anyone’s list of top ten wedding preparations.
So there we were, in a house full of aunties attempting to facilitate both joy and grief in the same week. In Adelaide. This is the story of one man’s journey through the strangest week in other people’s lives.
Garry with 2 Rs
P.S. As an extra nugget of CTC trivia, this is my 200th Far From Home/Cum Tacent Clament post. It seems somehow appropriate that I have spent it whinging about Adelaide. Make of that what you will.
23 November 2011
The Absent Trumpet
Victory comes in many different guises. Sometimes it looks like a champion swimmer looking back at the clock to discover she’s broken the world record. Other times it looks like the wily old grandmaster staring across the board and pushing his rook up to the eighth rank to announce ‘checkmate’. Very occasionally it looks like an Iranian penguin standing in a room full of second hand trombones while being showered in marshmallows by legions of adoring taxation officers.
Even more rarely than that, it looks like a man hiring a flash tuxedo, suiting up and standing at the end of an aisle to turn slightly to the side and… watch someone else get married.
Last weekend saw the all-important penultimate episode in the ongoing saga of the “who gets married to whom and when” game that has been the subject of countless poems, epic ballads and at least three movie adaptations (ok… two rather hastily typed blog posts, both of them by me). The crucial second to last wedding that would decide who would be the victor and who would take the consolation prize of getting married.
And so it was that I suited up and took my place in the bridal party for the best seat in the house from which to watch the second to last contestant take his vows and concede his claim to the title of last man standing.
It couldn’t have been a more perfect day. It was an outdoor wedding on the outskirts of Perth. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and although the sunny summer day was a little warm for the locals, especially those in black suit jackets, as the only representative of the great city of Darwin in attendance I was in my element. While everyone else was looking hot and bothered, I was just looking hot.
It was a charming ceremony; two songs, a homily, a vow or two and it was all over bar the photos which were by far the most painful part of the whole affair. I can’t speak for what the bride and groom might have been expecting, but I had always thought the final victory might have passed with just a little more ceremony. Nothing that would upstage the happy couple of course; just a simple trumpet blast or perhaps a nice tasteful explosion from a howitzer cannon. But no, we were just a little bit preoccupied with celebrating the wedding at hand, and I suppose I can live with that.
After all, I have been assured that the magnitude of celebratory fanfare that will accompany my own wedding, should such an event ever transpire, will be enough to knock the solar system off its… whatever solar systems sit on. And that’s quite enough responsibility to be carrying around for now, thank you very much.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
Even more rarely than that, it looks like a man hiring a flash tuxedo, suiting up and standing at the end of an aisle to turn slightly to the side and… watch someone else get married.
Last weekend saw the all-important penultimate episode in the ongoing saga of the “who gets married to whom and when” game that has been the subject of countless poems, epic ballads and at least three movie adaptations (ok… two rather hastily typed blog posts, both of them by me). The crucial second to last wedding that would decide who would be the victor and who would take the consolation prize of getting married.
And so it was that I suited up and took my place in the bridal party for the best seat in the house from which to watch the second to last contestant take his vows and concede his claim to the title of last man standing.
It couldn’t have been a more perfect day. It was an outdoor wedding on the outskirts of Perth. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, and although the sunny summer day was a little warm for the locals, especially those in black suit jackets, as the only representative of the great city of Darwin in attendance I was in my element. While everyone else was looking hot and bothered, I was just looking hot.
It was a charming ceremony; two songs, a homily, a vow or two and it was all over bar the photos which were by far the most painful part of the whole affair. I can’t speak for what the bride and groom might have been expecting, but I had always thought the final victory might have passed with just a little more ceremony. Nothing that would upstage the happy couple of course; just a simple trumpet blast or perhaps a nice tasteful explosion from a howitzer cannon. But no, we were just a little bit preoccupied with celebrating the wedding at hand, and I suppose I can live with that.
After all, I have been assured that the magnitude of celebratory fanfare that will accompany my own wedding, should such an event ever transpire, will be enough to knock the solar system off its… whatever solar systems sit on. And that’s quite enough responsibility to be carrying around for now, thank you very much.
Make of that what you will.
Garry with 2 Rs
02 May 2011
The Rollercoaster - Part One
As a writer, aspiring journalist and one who takes an interest in current affairs, I do my best to take in my share of news. I generally have a news website open at work (don’t tell my network admin. I don’t want to go back to that month or so where they decided blocking the news would increase productivity) and I occasionally read other opinion sites recreationally.
Unfortunately the dark side of consuming a lot of news is that for every well written, researched and properly considered piece that gets filed, you have to sift through an enormous amount of inconsequential or poorly written or unprofessionally produced garbage to get at it.
And then every so often, a weekend comes around that just sets the whole online media community on fire.
It started out with me being all scandalised and indignant about the ABC being forced to cut the Chaser’s commentary of the royal wedding on account of the Monarchy changing the conditions of the broadcast rights with under a week to go before the wedding to disallow the use of the footage for humour or satire.
I’m still pretty annoyed about that. Not so much for the Chaser, as for the fact that apparently England are allowed to tell Australian media what they can and can’t do with footage of a public event like the wedding. Sure, obviously no-one wants to go around ruining the big day for the couple. But honestly, if England thinks it can’t handle people poking fun of the monarchy, if it really thinks that people having a joke at it’s expense is something that warrants a global ban, then in my opinion there’s really only one word for that:
Coward.
Okay, there are others. I’m not going to print them here because K.Kim gets upset with me when I use mildly offensive language.
But then when Friday night Aussie time finally rolled around, I found I was compelled to turn the footage on. Prior to that, I had been planning to boycott, based largely on my antagonism for all things English and my distaste for the sort of frivolous and vacuous nonsense that goes along with the build up to this sort of thing. I was legitimately concerned about the possibility of damaging my TV by getting frustrated and throwing things at it.
Unfortunately there really wasn’t anything else to do, because every other person I knew was either working or watching the wedding. In despair I eventually caved in and switched on the ABC’s coverage, minus the Chaser.
I’m glad I did. I timed it to perfection, and managed to skip all the pre-service nonsense and fashion commentary and arrived just in time to hear the priest say “Dearly beloved”. The service itself was pretty good, and most of the music was really nice. Except of course “Jerusalem”, which by common law has to be sung at every English wedding, and must be sung in a different time signature by every person in attendance.
I really hate that ‘hymn’.
After all the festivity I was faced with brain splitting decision of whether to blog about it or not. I felt like I should add my voice to the other billion or so, but then, I also didn’t feel like I had anything really consequential to add to mountain of other inconsequential bits of royal gunk getting around. Of course that hasn’t inhibited me from writing a page and a half about it so far without any signs of slowing up, but that’s exactly the point. An event like this seems to generate idiotic ramblings like this one by its sheer weight of existence.
And that really pisses me off (Sorry Kim)
Garry with 2 Rs
P.S. You know what else pisses me off? Waiting just one day to post and then…
23 March 2011
An Awesome Weekend - Part Two
At six fifteen I was awoken by a text message asking me where the hell I was. I had managed to set my alarm for the wrong day. I had developed a tickle in my throat overnight, but I managed to grind out a coherent apology over the phone and my friend graciously agreed to come and pick me up from the motel. In the meantime I stumbled into my suit and threw everything else into my backpack. By the time my lift arrived I was the sharpest dressed zombie in South East Queensland.
I am not well known for my navigational skills. Or, to put it more accurately, I am well known for having a catastrophically poor sense of direction. And that's just in Darwin, which by rights I should know like the back of my hand by now.
Incidently, as a by-product of spending four and a half years typing up these incessant blog posts, my familiarity with the back of my hands is up there with best of them.
The point is that when my friend handed me a print-out of Google's instructions on how to get from Indooroopilly train station in Brisbane to Stanthorpe Presbyterian Church in Stanthorpe it did not bode well for the journey ahead.
Interesting (well...) fact: Despite having a population of just five and a half thousand, Stanthorpe has both a Uniting Church and a continuing Presbyterian church (plus all the others you'd expect in an Australian country town). I don't know what the story is there. And if you don't know why that's intriguing in the first place, don't panic. Within a generation or two it won't matter anymore.
The plain fact is that I'd be utterly incapable of giving you useful directions to either of them without consulting the satnav at least twice. This is one of the reasons I'm so rarely invited to join street evangelism missions.
There are others.
We made it to the wedding with five minutes to spare. The bride and groom had asked me to do one of the scripture readings, which would have been a great honour if not for the fact that the reading was taken from the Song of Songs. If you know your Old Testament then you'll realise that's a magnificently awkward choice for a wedding ceremony. If you don't know your Old Testament, then TURN OR BURN, HEATHEN!
The reception was delightful. As always it was a great chance to catch up with old friends, relive old times and reassure each other that we're still awesome. After spending the previous evening with platinum selling rock stars, taking lunch with assorted doctors, aerospace engineers, international missionaries and federal parliamentary journalists led this particular training officer to the conclusion that some of us needed more reassurance than others.
By the end of the trip back to Brisbane later that afternoon my throat tickle had developed into a dry cough and runny nose. I had planned to spend Saturday night catching up with a few Brisbane friends who hadn't gone to the wedding. I ended up tending to my exasperated sinuses in front of a hastily selected DVD and then turning in at about ten.
But first I took great care to correctly set my alarm for the following morning so I'd make my flight home.
I am not well known for my navigational skills. Or, to put it more accurately, I am well known for having a catastrophically poor sense of direction. And that's just in Darwin, which by rights I should know like the back of my hand by now.
Incidently, as a by-product of spending four and a half years typing up these incessant blog posts, my familiarity with the back of my hands is up there with best of them.
The point is that when my friend handed me a print-out of Google's instructions on how to get from Indooroopilly train station in Brisbane to Stanthorpe Presbyterian Church in Stanthorpe it did not bode well for the journey ahead.
Interesting (well...) fact: Despite having a population of just five and a half thousand, Stanthorpe has both a Uniting Church and a continuing Presbyterian church (plus all the others you'd expect in an Australian country town). I don't know what the story is there. And if you don't know why that's intriguing in the first place, don't panic. Within a generation or two it won't matter anymore.
The plain fact is that I'd be utterly incapable of giving you useful directions to either of them without consulting the satnav at least twice. This is one of the reasons I'm so rarely invited to join street evangelism missions.
There are others.
We made it to the wedding with five minutes to spare. The bride and groom had asked me to do one of the scripture readings, which would have been a great honour if not for the fact that the reading was taken from the Song of Songs. If you know your Old Testament then you'll realise that's a magnificently awkward choice for a wedding ceremony. If you don't know your Old Testament, then TURN OR BURN, HEATHEN!
The reception was delightful. As always it was a great chance to catch up with old friends, relive old times and reassure each other that we're still awesome. After spending the previous evening with platinum selling rock stars, taking lunch with assorted doctors, aerospace engineers, international missionaries and federal parliamentary journalists led this particular training officer to the conclusion that some of us needed more reassurance than others.
By the end of the trip back to Brisbane later that afternoon my throat tickle had developed into a dry cough and runny nose. I had planned to spend Saturday night catching up with a few Brisbane friends who hadn't gone to the wedding. I ended up tending to my exasperated sinuses in front of a hastily selected DVD and then turning in at about ten.
But first I took great care to correctly set my alarm for the following morning so I'd make my flight home.
04 October 2010
I Love You Baby
I went through a phase a few years ago when I got passionately vocal about my distaste for weddings. It might have had something to do with the frequency with which they were occurring; at one stage I got back from uni break to find four couples had become engaged during July. It was a strange sort of a phase because I enjoy a nice dinner and a catch-up as much as the next guy, and Christian wedding services are usually (depending on all sorts of things) quite nice. I think after my fourth or fifth wedding in quick succession the excess pageantry and forced emotion started to grate on me. Thank goodness, weddings amongst my contemporaries these days are becoming increasingly rare, possibly due to almost all my contemporaries being married by now.
The wedding craze being over, the latest craze is equally insidious in terms of forced enthusiasm. It consists of a couple rocking up to church one morning sporting a newborn baby and immediately being beset by flocks of churchwomen babbling unintelligibly. Said flock then invites their begrudging husbands/fiancés/boyfriends/me into the huddle to meet the newest addition to the congregation and to try to come up with a compliment for the baby that sounds credible and sincere.
I don’t find babies attractive. I find them small, delicate, messy and loud. I can understand why parents of newborns are so besotted; that’s a tangible biological connection. I don’t understand what goes wrong in the brains of the gaggle of clucky womenfolk at each new arrival. Rhetorical questions like “hasn’t he got lots of lovely thick hair?” or “he’s got a lovely strong grip on him, hasn’t he?” or “isn’t he just as cute as a button?” are not only strange things to say, in many cases they’re patently absurd. Babies are generally bald and weak, and buttons aren’t remotely cute. So I guess that last one might actually be true.
The point is, I was pleasantly surprised this month to be informed of two new engagements of old uni friends in Brisbane. Hopefully this signals a turn in the tide of public behaviour and we can go back to fancy parties and church services instead of hospital visits and arranging our social lives around breast-feeding schedules.
We can only hope.
…
Garry with 2 Rs
The wedding craze being over, the latest craze is equally insidious in terms of forced enthusiasm. It consists of a couple rocking up to church one morning sporting a newborn baby and immediately being beset by flocks of churchwomen babbling unintelligibly. Said flock then invites their begrudging husbands/fiancés/boyfriends/me into the huddle to meet the newest addition to the congregation and to try to come up with a compliment for the baby that sounds credible and sincere.
I don’t find babies attractive. I find them small, delicate, messy and loud. I can understand why parents of newborns are so besotted; that’s a tangible biological connection. I don’t understand what goes wrong in the brains of the gaggle of clucky womenfolk at each new arrival. Rhetorical questions like “hasn’t he got lots of lovely thick hair?” or “he’s got a lovely strong grip on him, hasn’t he?” or “isn’t he just as cute as a button?” are not only strange things to say, in many cases they’re patently absurd. Babies are generally bald and weak, and buttons aren’t remotely cute. So I guess that last one might actually be true.
The point is, I was pleasantly surprised this month to be informed of two new engagements of old uni friends in Brisbane. Hopefully this signals a turn in the tide of public behaviour and we can go back to fancy parties and church services instead of hospital visits and arranging our social lives around breast-feeding schedules.
We can only hope.
…
Garry with 2 Rs
17 January 2008
My Heart is Stirred by a Noble Theme
It's been a while since my last post. This is due largely to me waiting until something momentous happens that inspires me to write about it. There has been a bit going on for me lately, but nothing that has had that… that… 'je ne sais quoi' (pardon my French) that makes my blog amongst the most pretentious on the internet.
Having only recently recovered from my latest interstate wedding trip, I felt the time was right, as one of the last remaining single men in the country, to provide what I hope will be a logical, culturally sensitive, sober and universally acceptable account of the whole 'wedding' production from the point of view of a non-participant. Regular readers will of course realise that the chances of me assuming any of the aforementioned characteristics, let alone all of them at once, are fairly slim.
Weddings are really really stupid (...hic...). I'm not saying this with any specific reference to the last one I attended (which was comparatively nice), but rather as a denouncement of the cultural phenomenon of weddings in general.
I should probably make the point here before I really get into full denouncing mode that I am distinguishing 'weddings' from 'marriages' here. 'Marriage' is a great idea; a holy union twixt bla bla bla. Weddings, on the other hand, are almost enough to make the work I'm supposed to be doing instead of writing this look enticing. Almost.
I can accept that it's appropriate to mark the joyous moment with a certain amount of ceremony and celebration. I don't accept that it's necessary or desirable to mark the moment with a large degree of exertion and stress. I haven't been privy to a wedding yet that didn't involve at least three days of complete madness, running around to ensure a 40 minute ceremony can be performed without a single problem. Not that they ever are.
At this point photographers, dressmakers, florists, chefs, venue owners and old ladies in floral dresses who appear out of nowhere will be making the argument that it is all worth it to make sure the happy couple have a perfect day, and that everything goes exactly the way they want it to. Forgive my cynicism, but if everything went just the way the happy couple wanted it to, wouldn't we just skip the stress and cut straight to the honeymoon? It seems to me that most of what goes on at weddings happen in spite of what the couple wants, not because of it.
It was shrewdly observed by an onlooker at a recent wedding that in fact the wedding ceremony is not for the couple, but rather for the couple's mothers. I'm not sure why couples' mothers find it such a joy/necessity to tear their hair out over the ceremony and reception, although I suppose it may serve to distract them from the fact that their son/daughter is about to get married. Perhaps sagely fathers-of-the-bride in time immemorial designed the wedding ceremony in order to give mothers-of-the-bride something to do instead of fretting enough to give themselves stomach ulcers.
I recently heard a sermon preached on Psalm 45, which is a royal wedding song. The first verse says "My heart is stirred by a noble theme". The preacher remarked on the contrast between the psalmist's attitude towards weddings and the typical Australian attitude. I couldn't agree more.
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
Having only recently recovered from my latest interstate wedding trip, I felt the time was right, as one of the last remaining single men in the country, to provide what I hope will be a logical, culturally sensitive, sober and universally acceptable account of the whole 'wedding' production from the point of view of a non-participant. Regular readers will of course realise that the chances of me assuming any of the aforementioned characteristics, let alone all of them at once, are fairly slim.
Weddings are really really stupid (...hic...). I'm not saying this with any specific reference to the last one I attended (which was comparatively nice), but rather as a denouncement of the cultural phenomenon of weddings in general.
I should probably make the point here before I really get into full denouncing mode that I am distinguishing 'weddings' from 'marriages' here. 'Marriage' is a great idea; a holy union twixt bla bla bla. Weddings, on the other hand, are almost enough to make the work I'm supposed to be doing instead of writing this look enticing. Almost.
I can accept that it's appropriate to mark the joyous moment with a certain amount of ceremony and celebration. I don't accept that it's necessary or desirable to mark the moment with a large degree of exertion and stress. I haven't been privy to a wedding yet that didn't involve at least three days of complete madness, running around to ensure a 40 minute ceremony can be performed without a single problem. Not that they ever are.
At this point photographers, dressmakers, florists, chefs, venue owners and old ladies in floral dresses who appear out of nowhere will be making the argument that it is all worth it to make sure the happy couple have a perfect day, and that everything goes exactly the way they want it to. Forgive my cynicism, but if everything went just the way the happy couple wanted it to, wouldn't we just skip the stress and cut straight to the honeymoon? It seems to me that most of what goes on at weddings happen in spite of what the couple wants, not because of it.
It was shrewdly observed by an onlooker at a recent wedding that in fact the wedding ceremony is not for the couple, but rather for the couple's mothers. I'm not sure why couples' mothers find it such a joy/necessity to tear their hair out over the ceremony and reception, although I suppose it may serve to distract them from the fact that their son/daughter is about to get married. Perhaps sagely fathers-of-the-bride in time immemorial designed the wedding ceremony in order to give mothers-of-the-bride something to do instead of fretting enough to give themselves stomach ulcers.
I recently heard a sermon preached on Psalm 45, which is a royal wedding song. The first verse says "My heart is stirred by a noble theme". The preacher remarked on the contrast between the psalmist's attitude towards weddings and the typical Australian attitude. I couldn't agree more.
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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