In early August this summer, I traveled to London for a few days to officiate at the wedding ceremony of Danny Robertson ’09. He and his lovely wife, Siobahn, had been married the previous year in a ceremony that was necessarily low-key due to Covid restrictions. For this ceremony they hosted family and friends from as far away as Australia for a more festive celebration.
Having been a Justice of the Peace back in the 90s and having retained the privilege of marrying couples, I have done probably 100+ ceremonies, a couple dozen for Northwood grads and faculty. The venue for this affair, Loseley Park in Guildford, was among the most spectacular I have seen: an old English manor house situated on a 1,400-acre estate. The wedding took place in ”The Walled Garden”, two- and-one-half exquisite acres highlighted by its more than a thousand precisely clipped rose bushes. The script for the ceremony was a collaboration between Danny, Siobahn and me, and included some wonderful readings and recollections by the couple’s friends and family. Happily, my pronounced Boston accent didn’t put a damper on the celebration.
At the reception, it was a pleasure to see Danny’s classmate, Tom Mills, also a Brit, who is now living in Salem, Massachusetts with his charming wife, Alyssa. I also got to chat with some of Danny’s buddies from England and Siena College, with whom I had golfed or grabbed a meal, in either London or Placid
In the two days before the wedding, I stayed with Sam Clelland ’15 in Islington. Sam works for Deloitte in London; coincidentally, Danny will be joining that firm in September. When were weren’t dining out, we caught up on episodes of my favorite English situation comedy, Friday Night Dinner. If you are looking for a book about the New York Times, Sam, it may have slipped into my suitcase.
All in all, it was a smashing time, as they say in the UK. One highlight was an animated conversation about Trump with a highly educated Polish cabbie (MA in history) whose wife happens to be in the office of alumni affairs at The London School of Economics. The lowlight was the drunken couple next to me on the fight from Reykjavik to Boston. The last ten minutes of the flight was punctuated by the piercing screams of the wife as she excoriated her husband loudly enough in an impenetrable accent to draw the attention of passengers in first class, a fair distance from our seats in “economy light.” An odd conclusion to an otherwise brilliant trip.