WORDS OF LOVE

With so many words and deeds of hate and vi­o­lence in the world it was so good to hear words of love.

Pa­raules d’amor floated on the warm Asian evening air, sow­ing time­less sweet­ness and af­fec­tion, the words lost in trans­la­tion to the as­sem­bled Sin­ga­pore­ans, but the rich­ness and soft­ness of the sen­ti­ment tran­scend­ing lan­guage.

For Mag­gie and me it was every bit as emo­tional as hear­ing Joan Manuel Ser­rat sing his sig­na­ture song at La Palau de la Mu­sica. Then, some years ago now, our dear friend Conxita had been seated be­side us smil­ing through tears, mouthing the words, then singing along with hun­dreds of oth­ers for whom it sus­tains, going to the heart of mem­ory, of youth and life.

Ella, five when we made Cat­alo­nia our home, is sud­denly 26. Where have the years gone? Ella and our son Joe, seven months old at the time of our move, will, for­ever I am sure, con­tinue to talk to one an­other in Cata­lan re­gard­less of where in the world they are.

In April Ella mar­ried Bryan, a mo­ment of magic when we were weaved into this gen­tle and kind man’s large fam­ily dur­ing one of the hap­pi­est and most be­wil­der­ing weeks of our lives.

Ella and Bryan have been to­gether since uni­ver­sity, both film grad­u­ates and now set on di­rect­ing and writ­ing ca­reers. They will begin in Lon­don this au­tumn, by ne­ces­sity not choice be­cause that is where the op­por­tu­ni­ties are great­est .... at the mo­ment.

We talk of a gath­er­ing, a cel­e­bra­tion, here on our Pri­o­rat farm next year for Eu­ro­pean fam­ily and friends, but for the wed­ding it was deemed safest and wis­est if our small core fam­ily group, five of us, headed East rather than Bryan’s great clan com­ing West.

The nine days went spin­ning by. The travel was an en­durance test but we man­aged bet­ter than we had hoped. It was Mag­gie’s first visit to Asia. Work had taken me there many moons ago, to China and the Philip­pines, so I had an inkling of what to ex­pect, not least the hu­mid­ity, and we talked of the be­wil­der­ments we faced.

Nei­ther of us ex­pected to be ser­e­naded in Cata­lan.

Gui­tarist and vo­cal­ist Car­les Sendros, orig­i­nally from Barcelona, liv­ing and work­ing as a mu­si­cian in Sin­ga­pore for 14 years, stunned us, blend­ing the rad­i­cally new as­pect our lives with the one we love. Words of love were his part­ing gift, weighed with mean­ing, per­fect. Be­fore that he cast the spell of Song of the Birds.

I man­aged to make a speech, un­rolling a mar­riage con­tract that was my sur­prise for Bryan, defin­ing the need for him to, among other things, learn Cata­lan and de­clare his undy­ing al­le­giance to Barcelona FC (both male and fe­male teams). Mag­gie Whit­man read some Walt Whit­man, we thanked our new fam­ily for their warmth and kind­ness, and we tried to re­mem­ber the names of so many peo­ple.

We dis­persed re­luc­tantly, even­tu­ally, but not the music. It lin­gered. It will stay for­ever.

Thank you Car­les.