En Passant: Wedding guests make history

I AM CURRENTLY reading the story of the ancient English queen who I have always known as Boadicea, but who is apparently more properly known as Doris… sorry, not Doris, as Boudica. I am going to continue to call her Boadicea because that’s how I have always known her, although until I started this book I actually knew very, very little about her.

Boadicea lived in the first century AD, she died in 60 or 61AD, and the only reason she is remembered by History is that she was the person who led a revolt against the Romans who had invaded and occupied England in, as I recollect, 43AD.

She wasn’t an English queen (the concept of a united England had yet to evolve), she was the queen of the Iceni tribe, which occupied a portion of the east coast of modern England. And the thing is, Boadicea would have been forgotten had it not been for the Romans. The ancient Britons had yet to get to grips with the concept of writing, and it was a couple of similarly ancient Romans who mentioned her in their histories, and thus preserved evidence of her existence.

The book I’m reading takes things further, drawing on all the histories but also on modern archeological findings. And it occurred to me that it is amazing what conclusions historians can draw from a few Iron Age coins, a clay grain bin, a couple of burial sites, a rusty old axe head and a brass comb.

I bought this book about Boadicea from the Vryheid Hospice second-hand book shop, at an absolute bargain price of R8. Yes eight rands! And in another book I bought at the same time, something fell out from between the pages. It is someone’s wedding guests list, and like the historian examining the Boadicean evidence and reaching certain conclusions, I wondered what conclusions could be drawn from this wedding guest list from history.

Well, there are enough names on the list for me to know, or conclude, that it was a Vryheid wedding – there’s “Marie & Ben”, which surely must be Marie and my old friend, and St John Ambulance stalwart, Ben van Eck; there’s “Alma & Ted”, which must be Alma and my old pal Ted Horner, who now live in Gauteng. You know old Ted – his dad once had the brick works in town.

True, there are any number of towns that could have a couple called Marie and Ben, and Alma and Ted, but a “Mrs Purcell” also got the nod to this wedding, and that sounds like the widow of my old mate Dudley. Dudley was a gentle old soul who I met at the Moths, back shortly after the rindepest. He had a wonderful smile, did old Dudley, and in World War II used to drive a tank like the one parked outside the Moth Hall in High Street. Mrs Purcell’s name was (is?) Connie, and didn’t she give piano lessons?

The clincher that this was a Vryheid wedding, and that it was an Anglican Church wedding nogal, was that among the guests were “Rev and Eve”. This also gives us some idea of the date.

The “Rev” would have been my old buddy the now-late Reverend John Rayner, of St Peter’s Anglican Church in High Street, who was married to Eve. I can think of no other Vryheid churchman who’d be a Reverend (as opposed to a Dominee, Pastor or Father) and who was married to an Eve. Nope, this is John Rayner, who was also the Northern Natal Commando and Moths chaplain.

And finally, apart from Mrs Purcell, the only other person on the list whose surname is given is “June Landers”, and she was as Vryheid as Hlobane Street.

The rest of the list are strangers to me. It was a moderately small wedding with just 98 guests, which was scribbled out and 100 was written at the top of the page. The last names on the list, presumably number 99 and 100, are “Charlotte & Tolla”, who were either initially overlooked or suddenly deserved an invitation.

I presume that the list was compiled by the bride, whoever she was, because grooms are only involved on the periphery of these things. He might be asked, “Do you really want your dronkgat friend Jimmy and his tart of a girlfriend to come to the wedding?” but that’s about it.

So the first names on the list, “Ma & Dad”, are probably her parents, and you’d image the second pair would be the groom’s parents, in which case their names were “Andrew & Jenny”. Thereafter it’s mostly couples; there are a couple of Uncles and Aunties, “Jimmy and Elsie”, for example, and a few blokes going alone – Robbie, Jacque, Reiner and Cedric, but no single women for these lads to “tjarf”, so they probably ended up getting really dronk after vandalising the groom’s car and before vomiting among the mother-in-law’s roses.

Actually hold on, “Dawn & Anne” were invited as a couple, so we seem to have two unattached girls, unless of course they are attached to each other and this was a trendy wedding tolerant of lesbians skipping the light fandango and turning cartwheels across the floor.

And I think it might have been a tolerant gathering because also on the list was “Tannie Mike & Braam” (I kid you not), and I can only presume that “Tannie” Mike was a distant cousin who’d had a sex change, and who was dating some dude called Braam.

Stone me, I hope Braam knew about this!