Her name was Emma and did she have a temper! On this date last year she threw everything at us: ferocious wind, torrential rain, and a blizzard. We were warned about her. “Stay indoors or she’ll get you too,” was the edict.
I couldn’t stay indoors. There was a wedding and I hadn’t been invited. Being a reporter with the manners of a gentle Black and Tan, I decided to crash it. It’s what we do.
Not least as it was within walking distance.
Brazilian woman Ione Porto was to marry west Cork man Glenn Cooper at Monkstown parish church in Dublin and the limousine company had refused to drive the bride-to-be there for fear of Storm Emma.
So Ione was marooned at a hotel 4km away. On the radio, I heard best man Brian Keenan was making his way on foot in the blizzard from Sandyford, 6km away. An appeal went out for someone to give him a lift.
I had to see what would happen.
I trudged to the church where the groom was waiting calmly, if driven to high romance. By the snowy context, perhaps. “I’ll wait as long as it takes,” he said. He was not going to be put off by a trifling national emergency.
The best man arrived in hiking boots, his suit carefully folded in what looked like a bag. He had got a lift from Leopardstown. "A kind stranger picked me up and left me safely at the church," he said.
The bridesmaids arrived by taxi and picked their way cautiously in high heels through the snow to the church door, their gossamer outfits in no contest with the cold. But they didn’t care. Snow was “impossible in Brazil”, said one, “but it’s nice. It’s different. It’s a surprise.”
Who could disagree? Not father of the groom Philip Cooper. He felt indebted to snow. The blizzard of 1947 in particular. "That's when I was conceived," he declared. He was born in March 1948.
And then the bride arrived – in the back of a squad car. A young garda deftly opened a passenger door. It was hardly how Ione Porto ever dreamed her wedding day would be.
Happy paper anniversary to the young couple who succeeded despite ferocious Emma’s objections.
Anniversary, from Latin anniversarium; "annus", meaning year; and "versus", to turn.
inaword@irishtimes.com
