Spectacles of the rose-tinted variety

Isn't it funny how the mind works? You start thinking about one thing and then, like a chain reaction, your mind instantly goes over a hundred loosely connected things in what seems like a split second. Almost like six degrees of separation in the brain!

It all started for me when I found a couple of pictures of my first husband. Somehow, I randomly came across the lyrics of a poem (which has been set to music) that some friends had performed for us at our wedding. They were, by the way, fantastic.

Then, BOOM! I was instantly 19 again! Strange as it may seem, there was a period of around 4 years when Sunday nights were the highlight of the week. I was secure in my wee group of friends and we had a lot in common. The time that springs to mind is a period of about a year within the 4 years. Our ward was meeting in another building because we were getting rennovations done. This meant that we'd meet with the other ward for Sacrament and then have our classes in the afternoon. So, Sundays for me went like this. I'd go and visit my Granny on a Sunday morning for an hour or so. Then, I'd leave and begin the walk (3 miles or so - I had no car) to Church, calling in for a friend on the way and she'd walk the last mile with me. We'd have a perfectly pleasant afternoon at Church, followed by choir practice. This meant it was late afternoon when we finished. Three of us would then walk back to our wee corner of Belfast (via a Chinese takeaway) singing the entire way! Regardless of the weather, we always seemed to have a lot to talk and laugh about!

After our walk home, we'd go to another friend's house and chat for a while. Then we'd sing for an hour or so (quite by accident we managed to form a wee group and used to sing at meetings and firesides, sometimes through popular request and the odd time controversially!). One of the songs we'd sing was an arrangement for women's voices of the song that was performed at our wedding. It was called Music, when soft voices die. The poem itself was written by Percy B Shelley and the music composed by Charles Wood.

After singing, we'd play a board game and inevitably settle down to watch a Monty Python film, usually the Life of Brian. The film would end and almost as inevitably the candles would be lit, Enya would go on the stereo and we'd all just lie around chatting.

There are few things in anyone's life which truly deserve the rose-tinted glasses. For me, this is one of the few. Heaven knows there are plenty of events in my life that need to be viewed with gritty realism, but this is one of the good ones.

I have decided that when looking back over my life, I can easily pick out the lessons learned, the battles won and the character building moments. Just as easily, though, I can pick out the plain, old-fashioned good times which need no editing to become viewable through the spectacles of the rose-tinted variety.

Ahhhh......nostalgia