farmdoc's blog post number 100

Tears again. The tune Wish me luck (as you wave me goodbye) never fails to move me. The most recent time was last Sunday night when Sweetheart Vivienne’s brother David, and Anthea, his bride of a few hours, departed their wedding reception. Their relatives and friends had formed a circle – ramshackle, but more circular than not. Starting together, David progressed clockwise and Anthea anticlockwise, only by hugging and kissing their circumferential well-wishers. My memories flooded in of our 1967 wedding when Sweetheart Vivienne and I ran the same gauntlet to the same musical accompaniment, before reaching the door and beginning our journey through life as a married couple. The same tune also conjures vivid imagined images of 1940s English railway platforms festooned with Union Jacks and bunting, and carriages full of tin-helmeted, rosy-cheeked boys in thick khaki uniforms waving from train windows to the strains of Gracie Fields or Vera Lynn patriotically wishing them luck whilst knowing that the luckiest of them would return unscathed, the lucky would return crippled, and the unlucky just wouldn’t return. As with much of what happens in my life, I don’t know why Wish me luck – more than any other tune – brings me to tears. It always has, and it always will. But I do wish David and Anthea luck in their future life together. I reckon they deserve it.