Date: July 2023I sat in Belfast City Airport, hungover, alongside a couple of friends, awaiting our flight back to Newcastle after a weekend at an Irish Quaker wedding.
We had had quite the adventure on the journey into deepest darkest Northern Ireland, fuelled as it was by pints of Guinness, eventful bus journeys and lashings of celebration.
I have attended several weddings over the last few years and they have often left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I am delighted for the happy couple, as they make the ultimate public declaration of love and commitment. On the other I am usually a bit taken aback by the performance of it all; the ceremony, the speeches, the first dance and cake cutting. It always seems rather overwhelming and often leaves me wondering if this is really for me.
However, with increasing frequency I have been attending the weddings of those in my closest circle of friends. This has caused me to reflect on my somewhat cynical attitude to weddings. Watching on as those nearest and dearest to me beam with joy as they expose the most vulnerable aspects of their person in front of hundreds of people in order to be explicit about the love they feel for their chosen partner (and all of my friends have wonderful partners) never fails to stir the emotions.
Seeing my friends put themselves out there for love has helped me realise that putting oneself out there for the things and the people you care about is one of the bravest acts a person can take. Regardless of the pomp and ceremony that may surround it, these simple acts of presence and declaration are important.
As I stared at the departure board in that airport, my mind wandered back to the previous day. Sat in a Quaker meeting house together with over a hundred other silent souls, staring out the window to branches of the emerald green trees swaying in the wind and swirling rain, I couldn't helped but be moved by it all.
Of course that was the wedding bit, the reception was a different story... Hence the need for a rehydrating lime and soda just before boarding the plane back to paracetamol and bed.
Appearance: It looked better than the photo suggests. It was a free pour and the lime cordial flowed generously through the bubbles of the soda water, creating the perfect translucent lens for distorting the hard Irish rain hitting the window of the terminal building.
Taste: A bit like my own experience of the weekend (weddings are emotional events, after all) it was a little bittersweet. Not that it was tasty or refreshing but the cordial was a little sour and perhaps not as full bodied as the appearance had me believing. Nevertheless it was refreshing.
Price: £5.50 for two, which is a little steep but, then again, it is an airport bar and there was nowhere else to go.
A lime and soda which nourished the body much like love and time with good friends. Worth a trip for.
