119. A Wedding in Southall: The Archaeology of a Box (18)

This is the last but one in the series The Archaeology of a Box. It is based on an envelope of photos of my wedding to Pat in 1964 that I found among my boxed-up papers.

In this blog I test my long-term memory by trying to identify all the people in my 1964 wedding party. In the next I test your short-term memory with a version of Kim's game.

[Pat and I]

[Pat and I with our parents (mine on the left), my sister Ruth, my best man, Gaston Bart-Williams]]

[The Wedding Party]

So here we go.

I will work across from the left side of the picture.

I don't remember who the lady on the church step, the gentleman with the stick and the three ladies and one man on his left are. I will be catching up with Pat over Christmas so will ask her and, if she remembers, will update later.

Two of my student friends from Selwyn College Cambridge, Brian Hitchens and Stewart Cuff are behind the man with the stick. A third Selwyn friend, Lionel Warne (dark hair and glasses) is at the back.

Next are my sisters, Elizabeth and Ruth and in front of them Roland and Dawn, the children of Henry and Iris Bradford. Henry and Iris can be seen in the back row between Elizabeth and Ruth.

Henry was a fellow student at the London School of Economics and Political Science who had worked for a number of years on the London docks before a bad accident. Pat has kept up with Henry and Iris over many years and Henry and I re-established some contact after my retirement in 2002. He has written a number of books based on his docklands experience including Slaves, Serfs and Wage-Slavery - A Tale of London's Docklands (2008) and Dockers' Stories from the Second World War (2012).

Then my best man, Gaston Bart-Williams. This leads me to a long digression.

I don't remember how my father met Gaston but he brought us together when I was living at home in Enfield and we became good friends. Gaston, from Sierra Leone, was a couple of years older than I and keen to make a living as a writer. He was a member of PEN (Poets, Essayists and Novelists), an organisation founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and cooperation among writers, to fight for freedom of expression and to act as a voice for writers persecuted for their views. Gaston took me along with him to some of their meetings. I particularly remember one of these in which the jazz singer Cleo Laine and her jazz composer husband Johnny Dankworth performed for the small group present. Cleo Laine, the daughter of a Jamaican building labourer and an English farmer's daughter, spent much of her childhood in Southall. In 1961 I saw her perform in the Edinburgh Festival production of Kurt Weill's opera/ballet The Seven Deadly Sins alongside Lotte Lenya, Kurt Weill's wife (but probably better remembered now for her role as SPECTRE's Rosa Klebb in the 1963 James Bond movie From Russia with Love).

I have been a long time fan of Kurt Weill and Berthold Brecht. In Auckland Sharon and I have been to a production of The Threepenny Opera at the Maidment Theatre and to two Ute Lemper concerts in the Auckland Town Hall, the first in 2003, the second, Angels over Berlin, in 2010.

I didn't see much of Gaston after Pat and I were married. He went to Scandinavia - Norway I think - for a spell. After that I have had to depend on Google. He spent many years in Kerpen, Germany and his son Patrice was born there in 1979; Patrice's mother was a German fashion designer. When Patrice was eleven Gaston, then 52, was killed in a boating accident off the coast of Sierra Leone. He was acknowledged as a writer, poet and Sierra Leone's first film-maker. Patrice was born and raised in Germany and makes a career as an Afro-German reggae artist using pieces from his father's poetry among his lyrics. I could find no images of Gaston on the web but multiple ones of Patrice, including this one with President Obama:

[Image from: www.planet-interview.de]

Back to the wedding party continuing from the left.

I am not sure who the two people are at the back between my sister Ruth and Gaston. Between Gaston and my father are Anna, a student friend from LSE, and, I think, Uncle Geoff, my father's youngest brother. Then at the back is Uncle Peter, my mother's brother. My brother Stuart is between Mum and Dad and in front of Mum the small boy is one of Uncle Geoff and Aunty Marguerita's two sons, Simon or Martin I'm not sure which. Between Mum and I are Fran, a friend of Pat's and Aunty Chrissie, Uncle Peter's wife. Fran's husband must be there somewhere too.

The next person I can identify is between Pat's Mum and Dad - her brother Philip. On Pat's Dad's shoulder could be Mrs Bennett, a family friend from St. George's Enfield and behind her my father's eldest brother, Uncle Joe. Then there is Grandma Deeks with Geoff and Marguerita's daughter Judith, and Aunty Mollie, Uncle's Joe's wife. Behind Mollie is Aunty Marguerita. The tall lady with the white handbag is Anne Hoyle, a teacher who lodged with us when we lived in Queen's Park, NW6. Then another brother of my father's, my Uncle Rod and his wife Aunty Olive plus three people whose names I don't remember.

I have only one wedding gift that has survived the fifty years from 1964.

[Four Swedish Holmegaard liqueur glasses - Gaston's Wedding Gift.]

These are not hidden away in my box. They stay alive in use rather than memory.