Corner shop community

I went to the corner shop as usual on a sunday morning to buy the paper and was greeted by an unfamiliar face at the till. He could see my surprise so I asked and he replied, slightly annoyed, 'everyone has been asking that. He's moved on, gone back to Turkey.'

I realised I didn't even know his name. Yet i felt i had got to know the corner shop guy, who always greeted me with a smile and 'how's my friend' (Gustavo). He liked to tease Gustavo for his unkempt hair while stroking his trim styled beard.

When I got home we were both sad that we hadn't had the chance to find out his name, and tell him how much we appreciated his warmth, how he had been a key part of our local community - people you recognise and trust.

Had he been forced to leave by new owners, perhaps there was there some family problem that meant he had to leave London?

A few weeks later I bumped into this Kurdish ex-shop keeper and asked him what he was up to, that we missed him. He told us that he sold the business and had graduated from university. It was great to find out our assumptions were wrong and he was happy.

Searching for images of corner shops I found a blogger who had written about these guys. They used to give her a bottle of wine when it was her birthday. So I guess they were something special.

Fragments on a Night Train

Didnt anyone tell them?
You go on holiday to escape yourself
To give yourself a break
from yourself
your petty worries
your daily habits
your work routine

But here they are lugging their burdens in large wheeled bags onto the train flying through the night with light dreams of fields unseen.

I realised soon that i wasnt the one observing I was a mirror on their world.
They were watching their children and each other through my eyes

My presence alone, i need not speak, reflected back their lack of imagination.
A silent outsider I echoed back their dull coversation and their focus on food, phone games, multi distraction as the sights and play of light on europe sped past unnoticed.

Would they crack the glass and make me real with questions I couldn't ignore?
I waited but they turned their large backs and lay down to sleep.

As I too lay down, the soft carriage beats and humming wind carried me back to the same seat alone in a night sleeper to Delhi from Calcutta with another family, this time in brightly coloured clothes, sharing their food and excitement enveloping me in their family circle without conversing, but communing through their indian spices and smiles.

A fragment I found in an old notebook as I was tidying my desk and arranging a trip to Italy for a friend's wedding. We're going by sleeper train. My favourite way to travel.

Wedding Fever

Let the wedding season begin! 

The summer that stretches in front of me will be punctuated by weekends away celebrating love and watching friends launch off the platform of happiness, hope, friends and family. 

Last weekend I was in Dorset for a very English wedding in the sun and rain with too much booze and the traditional trio of men giving speeches. 

Although fewer and fewer people marry now, for those that do, we are starting to reinvent these rituals and traditions.  We reinvent them when we make the myriad miniscule decisions from what to wear (does the bride wear white as a symbol of a new start rather than virginity, and is the groom formal? Can a guest wear white?), to where they marry (in a church because it’s a religious ritual, or because it symbolises your childhood community or tradition, or in a registry office or a field), whether the groom wears a ring (to symbolise equality? – both wear rings), who gives a speech, whether you ‘cut the cake’, whether the bride and groom stay apart the night before and leave on the night of the wedding. Each small decision and big decision – what vows are said, religious or atheist ceremony – is shaping the ritual and its meaning.

I think rituals can have a transformative power, not just for those directly involved, but for everyone there. They mark passages of time, they bond those there and they collectively reinforce values. So if you marry in a church you are probably consciously or unconsciously reinforcing your traditional values. A wedding creates a public space where your community comes together. When your community is fragmented, online, global, not just where you live and grew up, this is a modern way of creating a community in the physical, binding you to it, and giving it a part in supporting your relationship.

But it’s not about the hype and madness of a ‘fairytale wedding’ that will somehow magically transform your relationship into one of perfect romance. If we reinvent the ritual to symbolise crazy feats of perfection where the bride has to look the best she ever will and is treated like a princess, what does that symbolise? The more ‘perfect’ the wedding, aesthetically and materially, the more perfect will be your marriage. I prefer the story of friends of ours who married with two week’s notice in Mexico with a handful of friends and family, found a band on the street, asked a local family to cook the food and off they went. The focus became the excitement of life after the spontaneous romance. 

Marriage should be liberation, setting you free to live your life with someone who loves and supports you, setting off on an adventure together, not ‘settling down’. And the weddings that reflects that are the most inspiring and the ones you most enjoy

Mind you, our wedding was a drunken festival so I’m not sure what that symbolises for our married life.