BEFORE hitting 50 next year, former SNJ news editor Sandra Ashenford has compiled a bucket list of 50 goals to achieve before her birthday.

The aim is to do one every week.

List item no 18: Write a song/poem for Perdie and Harry’s wedding

PERDIE (daughter number three) and her boyfriend Harry returned from a wonderful holiday in Mexico early in 2014 and announced their engagement to delighted friends and family.

While I was finalising my list, they were beginning to make plans for a wedding in November 2015, so I included my intention to write them a song or a poem for their happy day.

In the end, though, they couldn’t see the point of waiting and brought their plans forward to January 2015, and last Saturday they tied the knot at the beautiful university chapel at Francis Close Hall in Cheltenham.

We have a tendency to marry rather young in my family, and Perdie is just 19, the same age as I was when I became a wife a very long time ago; the love, joy and laughter of all their friends made the occasion a very happy one.

But the new arrangements absolutely didn’t give me very long to create a work of decent literary merit. There was certainly insufficient time to write a song, although it is probably true that several decades would not have been long enough for me to create a tuneful tribute without some help. I am famously tone deaf and can neither read nor write music.

So in the short time available, I penned the following poem, which I read out on the day. Daughter number four said it was soppy, but I think that’s allowed on your wedding day.

For Perdie and Harry

They fell into step together

On this journey of life,

And beneath Mexican skies,

Harry asked Perdie to become his wife.

So the journey continues

Through near and far places,

And they may drudge through downpours

Or dance along with the sun on their faces.

Every day of this journey

Is a gift from above,

And wherever the journey now takes them

They will travel forever hand-in-hand, and in love.