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Clouds scudding across the sky in a blustery wind, autumn already approaching. The motorcycle slicing through the heavy air, ready for anything. On the saddle, surveying the scene, still buoyant after weekend’s excitements.

A major family gathering, almost everyone with past or current connection making their way to Norfolk for a wedding, only a few missing, as good an attendance as happens in life on this planet. The assembled multitude spanning eight decades in age and a dozen countries in origin. Ancient incompatibilities and rivalries and undercurrents swept aside in the momentum.

Today on the motorcycle, a different reality. The weekend’s communal hilarities and the motorcycle journey’s harsh exigencies as opposite as things can be, each however necessary to wellbeing. Yesterday’s soft plenitude braced by today’s solitude and buffeting.

Behind the helmet visor, the wind and noise insufficient however to displace the weekend’s kaleidoscopic imprint. Awkwardness at the start as we all meet again, then the ceremony formalities, then food, wine flowing, noise levels rising, mostly laughter. Then the band and the surge to the dancefloor, ever more daring dance moves, expertly executed by some, with farcical amateurishness by others. In glorious sympathy the band playing on. Every beat and every dance move an affirmation of being there and nowhere else and being together and a denial of anything other.

Rain holding off on the motorcycle, a disappointing summer but the sun making a wonderful exception for four hours yesterday. The party reconvening for a picnic on grassy slopes facing Wymondham Abbey, clear skies and general tittering at the wedding’s excesses. Before long, toddlers riding uncles’ backs, demonstrations of footballing prowess, conspiracies to throw the cocksure into the stream. Lie back on a picnic rug, look up at the unaccustomed blue skies, soak up conversations’ susurrations and the sprinkle of laughter.

Well, today’s motorcycle journey ended, and the rain just starting. The mechanics of locking the machine and changing out of riding gear still to come, but such chores made light of today, the party’s aftermath still glowing and the mind’s smile resilient.