I already hinted, in another place, that moving from Aberystwyth to Earth took a long time: two trips in stupidly full transit vans, if you don’t have time to read a more general post.
Mostly this took so much effort because of all the stuff we have. Since I got myself a semi-disposable income through the medium of Student Loans back in 2003, I’ve been buying things on a pretty regular basis. I now have enough possessions that even I think there might be too many of ‘em.
And that brings me only slightly pointedly, to the subject of Wedding Presents. Traditionally, y’ken, the bride and groom are given gifts by their friends and family, in order that they can begin their married life together with some possessions of their own. That works pretty well, if the start of “married life together” is also the start of “life together at all”. It doesn’t work quite so well with seven years of material goods already demanding to be allocated within the confines of a moderately small house.
Thing is, we’re stupidly lucky. The pair of us have contrived to be born and raised in the prosperous West, with the might of history, piles of natural resources and an ethically embarrassing system of globalised capitalism combining to ensure that our worries mainly consist of “Can I buy another pair of Italian leather loafers, or should I finish paying off that awesome tweed sports jacket first?” and “Good God, what am I going to do with a seventh saucepan? That stupid stand from ARGOS is already way too full, and we can’t move the fridge because it is full of Reisling and if I unplug it it will get warm!”
High on our list of questions are “What the Hell do we need that we haven’t got?”, and “Damn, I wonder if I should upgrade my graphics card? It must be six months old by now!”. Low on our list is “Where is the next drink of clean water coming from?” and “I wonder if anyone will remember my name when they finally find my body?”
I reckon we can all agree that of those four questions, only the latter two are worth straining yourself to answer.
The basic gift list is up. We don’t need things, and the things we want are things we don’t need (and therefore crazy expensive). So we aren’t asking you to buy us things.
What we are asking, and what we do want, is for you to donate some money (about as much as you might have spent on a present, according to your means) to one of our nominated charities. It means more to us that our getting married is something that helps other people than it does that in fifteen years we might be able to say “Crap, that plate’s got smashed, an’ it was a wedding present an’ all.”
We’re asking you to push money at one, two or all three of our charities:
- Samaritans of Aberystwyth and Mid Wales, provide emotional support to people experiencing feelings of distress or dispair. Both Ruth & I used to volunteer with them, and you can take my word for it that they’re an essential service.
- Air Ambulance is an organisation supported entirely by charitable funds. They provide emergency assistance and transport those in need of urgent medical attention to hospital, often saving lives that would be lost waiting for a road-bound ambulance to reach remote locations.
- Water Aid is an international NGO that provides clean and safe drinking water to people in some of the poorest communities on the planet. They aim to provide lasting access to clean water and sanitation facilities in order to reduce the two million deaths per year caused by reliance on unsafe water sources.
I don’t want to come across as harsh here: if you’d like to give us a gift, I promise you I’ll thank you for thinking of us. But we’d both like it if your wedding present to us gave us something to be grateful for, and you donated on our behalf.
If, out of a sense of tradition, or obligation, or for some personal reason of your own, you feel obliged to get us a physical gift in addition to donating, then I guess that’s fine too: we have set up a gift list just in case you want to do both. But it’s a short list, because we don’t need this stuff. We want it, I guess, but not badly. And not more than we want to live.
thing about beds is they are not suitable for samaritans who obviously need to stay awake, and too heavy for air ambulances (they do better with stretchers) and (preferably) not wet.
Your gift is a special case, Daddy, which we’re intending to keep and not split between our three charities.
I suspect that a third of a bed would be even less use to our nominated good causes than a whole bed.