Part 84
I’ve written about my wife, Hero,and her interesting family before. This time I want to focus on how, even now, she confronts and handles tough situations.
Hero is an ordained church minister and has performed countless weddings, funerals and naming ceremonies over the years. Many of the wedding ceremonies have been non-denominational or for couples who did not want an overly traditional religious flavor to the ceremony. Hero always insists, however, that certain basic values be put to the couple embarking on a lifetime together.
Last week, she married a young couple, Jamie and Alice Bond, at a wedding venue called Sheene Mill in the little village of Melbourn (without an “e”). It is situated about seven miles from the city of Cambridge, in Cambridgeshire. The Mill is over 400 years old and has been cleverly renovated to provide an ideal wedding venue, a fine dining restaurant and a few rooms for overnight guests.
It is situated on the edge of the river Mel, with a large lily-covered pond in front of the restaurant and patio. Over to the left of the pool is a large lawn with a pergola or gazebo perched on a deck overhanging the pond.
Jamie and Alice are both in the police force. Jamie is the stepson of Nikkie Bond, who grew up as a close friend of my daughter Xanthe in Johannesburg, South Africa. When Xanthe relocated to Britain about three years ago, she stayed with Nikkie and her husband, Steve, in their house in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire.
When Jamie got engaged to Alice, they discussed the kind of wedding they wanted. Xanthe suggested that her Mom might be the ideal person to officiate. They liked the idea and Hero happily agreed. She spent some time with the couple going through the ceremony and making small changes to suit the wishes of the bride-to-be.
Hero, Xanthe and I drove down to the village of Melbourn the day before the wedding. Xanthe stayed at the same hotel as Steve and Nikkie. Hero and I were booked into a bed and breakfast place called “The old Magistrate’s Court.” For a moment, my worst fears were realized as we pulled up outside an old, well-maintained but rather austere building. I had visions of sleeping on a wooden bench in the courtroom, or worse in a jail cell adjourning the court.
We were greeted by a large and cheerful character called Les, who was casually dressed and barefooted. I never saw him wear shoes during our entire stay. He led us away from the main building and around the side to reveal a delightful little cottage, beautifully and comfortably furnished, with all mod cons (modern conveniences).
Not only was it comfortable, but our chatty barefoot host insisted on bringing us some pastries to go with the filter coffee provided in the cottage. I honestly cannot remember more delicious pastries in my life. Apparently, there was a French patisserie just down the road. Our breakfast the following morning was another gastronomic extravaganza. A virtuoso plate of delectable goodies: scrambled eggs, sausages, tomatoes, gherkins, cream cheese, even salmon and also a basket of assorted breads and croissants.
Careful eating habits went out of the window as we wolfed down the pastries and sipped the delicious aromatic coffee. Fortified by this excellent start, we rested a while, then joined Xanthe, Nikkie and Steve at their hotel for dinner, to experience another culinary feast.
The following morning at the Mill, Hero checked out the pergola space where she would stand, and everything seemed to be in order. I checked that they had a microphone. Hero does not have a loud voice and, when talking intimately to the couple during the service, she tends to drop her voice. I must add that Hero is nearly 83 years old and walks with a cane. She had not done a ceremony for over three years and I knew she was just a little nervous, although she showed no outward sign of it.
Then the bomb dropped. The mike, that had worked perfectly for another wedding the day before, was suddenly silent. I checked and discovered that a wire was loose but no one had the means to fix it and the ceremony was about to start. Hero shrugged and said “OK, so I’ll have to speak up.” There were nearly 100 guests and, from previous experience, I knew that I would have to stand at the back of the seating and lift my hands up in a gesture that told her to speak louder.
My indomitable lady launched into the ceremony. At first, her voice carried all the way to the back; but as she got to the point where she was addressing the bride and groom directly, her voice dropped, as I had predicted. There is a point in the ceremony where she normally holds up the two wedding rings and talks about the circles of the rings symbolizing “an emblem of permanency to mankind since time immemorial.” She urges the couple to see true love in the center of the rings.
However, Hero now suffers from numbness in her right hand; so I came up with the idea that the best man, Jamie’s brother Sam, should hold up the rings for her. He readily agreed, and so as Hero spoke about the rings to the couple as a symbol of their love, he held the rings up for the couple and the congregation to see. Unfortunately, at that moment, I started to urge Hero to speak up by raising my hands a few times. Sam (not knowing about my sound signals for Hero) promptly lifted the rings higher and higher until he was almost on tiptoe and wondering why in the hell I wanted him to lift them even higher!
This emerged in discussions with Sam after the ceremony and we all became hysterical with laughter. It was a scene straight out of one of those awful wedding movies where everything goes wrong!
Thank goodness that was the only hiccup. We drank champagne and munched canapés on the patio as the couple had their photographs taken, and there was almost a queue to speak to Hero and congratulate her on a wonderful ceremony. They assured her that they had heard all of it. My wonderful wife had triumphed over the communication problems and with her natural warmth and charm had endeared herself to everyone once again.
I was reminded of the time when Hero had faced real adversity back in South Africa. We were living in a typical gated and barbed-wire housing complex in Johannesburg. I was out at the time. There was yet another power failure and a group of four well-dressed men had driven into the complex. They knocked on some doors and eventually reached Hero, who was counselling a young woman with marital problems. She answered the door. One of the men asked if she knew whether there were any houses available for rent. As she thought about it, two of the men drew guns and pushed her inside.
Hero, being typically heroic, told the men furiously to get out, which they ignored. They pushed her onto the floor and kept the guns pointed at her. Two of the men rushed upstairs searching for loot. Our sitting room was filled with antiques and silverware, which they ignored. Hero continued to harangue the men, especially their leader who then put his gun to her head and spoke politely, “Please, will you be quiet,” As he did so, Hero lifted her left hand to try and brush the gun away and the man saw her diamond rings. That very morning, she had put on five diamond rings that she had just had cleaned. She hadn’t worn them for a long while. They were all heirlooms from both hers and my families, worth probably about $60,000.
The man saw them and spoke sharply in a language that Hero thinks was probably Nigerian (they were not South Africans). The other man bent down, took Hero’s ring finger, tried to pull the rings off without success. He then put her finger in his mouth and literally wrenched the rings off, tearing the flesh and ripping off her nail with it. As soon as they had the rings, they fled.
She never saw the rings again. She had to have extensive plastic surgery on the finger and a replacement nail. Worse still, she had to take a course of anti-retrovirals (a virus therapy) in case the man had AIDS (prevalent in Africa at the time).
Her courage and her quick recovery without any major psychological effects were quite amazing. According to the young girl she had been counselling and who had been pushed onto the floor in a corner, the girl had never seen anyone stand up to a serious threat like that before! In 1965, I found me a gutsy lady and now in 2021 I see the fire is still there!
People like Peter Warren also have that courageous streak, overcoming adversity and sticking firmly to their intended goals. In Peter’s case, the goal is a better world of communication for all with the ExoBrain computing system. In Hero’s case, it is her intention to remain active and productive. She is currently studying the ExoTech videos and materials and is only diverted by her compulsive drive to still help anyone in need.
I am truly blessed to be a major part of her life.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.