Account of Our Civil Partnership Ceremony: 18/5/07

Mon, 18 Jun 2007 00:33:48 +0100

It had been clouded and rainy every day for weeks and weeks. For at least two of them, Alexey and I, especially me, daily checked the forecast for the 18th May, the day set for our civil partnership 'wedding'. We'd arranged a programme of events at intervals at various venues radiating from the midday ceremony at the Town Hall of a well known north London borough called Islington, my home for many years and one year for Alexey. Our first ever meeting had been at a local coffee bar (not a Starbucks, thanks). At best the forecast icons showed a sun half hidden by a big cloud, but often that was replaced by one dark dribbling cloud, other times a bursting cloud. It mattered as one event could be a wash out, a Glastonbury or Wimbledon instead of bubbly and wedding cake in the local greenspace. For complicated reasons we were not going to use the Buddhist Centre, an obvious solution to the chancy al fresco afternoon. We done loads of planning and about 40 people would be around us so there was a counter-intuitive value in being open to whatever happens happens. Some weeks earlier we'd been hovering around the question of families - not whether to invite but actually to open discussion for the first time on the sex of one's partner with the two mothers, both of whom, it could be adduced from the homophobia of their upbringings, would not be amused by an invitation to a gay wedding. After considerable rephrasing I sent a letter to my mother and then silence for two days. Then she rang to readily accept the invitation to join us 150 miles from her home and three weeks before her ninetieth birthday. Meanwhile my brother in Germany was mobilising so there were six flying in from Frankfurt and now two (my sister with my mother) from Wales. For Russian Alexey there was a parallel coming out. All his UK friends, mainly from the early days at a London language school had no official knowledge of his secrets. Secrecy in the sense of what you know is at odds with what you can speak about is, in St Petersburg, the norm. But many bits came together in a way not unlike making a film. I'd decided I was not going to control anything on the day or, as I put it at the time, having done all the planning possible, I'd just let it run. And so it was. Over the day and subsequently, many of the 50 people who passed through, remarked on having a Great Day. However, we'd been privately saying for some months, we're doing it for us though we're happy others can join us if the wished. That was, I'd say, a primary motive. At our earliest venue, THE coffee bar, with all my family inside Alexey paced up and down conversing, well, coming out to his mum in St PBg (yes, she'd known). It went well but he physically shoot for half an hour. Somehow these parents and 'parent figures' virtually loom like monsters in the dark waiting to hurl us into some outer darkness. Seeing recently the Moscow church fathers fuming about sin and the stick wielding state condoned neo-faschist mobs was evidence of the continued and irrelevant use of gays in political power struggles. OK they (I mean the label on not people as such) have been replaced in my country as enemy numero uno by paedophiles.

Back to the day. I can reveal that the event took place under cloudless blue sky. As I stood on the Town Hall steps looking into it surrounded by guests being arranged by out photographer, the din of busy traffic faded away and, somewhere unseen, a blackbird trilled away, for me joining up the last few pieces left to be joined. Quite unexpected yet quite appropriate and very, very normal.

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Account of Our Civil Partnership Ceremony: 18/5/07