At the early hour of 4.30 a.m. on 16th March 2007, a small party of seven cold Freemasons and their wives stood in Glengall Street, Belfast, waiting to board the bus to speed them to Dublin Airport. In order to be admitted we had to know the password, which the driver formally asked us, viz. "Does anyone know the fare?" Fortunately, this happened to be one of those pieces of information that our intrepid band knew. We were on our way to spend St. Patrick's Day in Marseille, where St. Patrick's Lodge No. 43 had been invited to visit La Nef Écossaise No. 255 of the Grande Loge Nationale Française, Province de Massilia, and to twin with a new Lodge, St. Patrick's No. 1594 G.L.N.F., to be inaugurated on St. Patrick's Day.
After a couple of hours catching up on lost sleep, we arrived at the airport to forge our way to the check-in, and there discovered that one of the more "crafty" members of our group had planned a few days of freedom by sending his spouse to another part of France. He would have succeeded too, but for his colleagues, who were keeping a close eye on things. It was at this stage that a threat was made by someone who shall remain anonymous, that if any of our mishaps were reported back home, I would be hit over the head with a rolling pin. However, I'm sure Betty didn't mean it!
On to the security check, where anxious faces waited to see if our consignment of shamrock was to be allowed to contaminate la Belle France. We need not have worried — once it was pointed out that the plants were too small to smoke, security lost interest. Not so the French police who, when we arrived in Marseille Airport, decided to have a go at splitting us up again as they led one of us off to be questioned. After a long wait and a few expeditions into the bowels of the airport to find the police department, we were eventually re-united. By this time it was starting to feel like a game, to see if we could actually lose anybody. So to the bus for Marseille, and the intervention of a taxi driver who convinced us of the advantages of travelling in style rather than mixing with the great unwashed on public transport. So on to the taxis — but wait, some had already bought bus tickets. Aha, here was our chance to lose someone — only to be foiled by the foresight of one of our victims to have brought along a sat-nav!
All gathered at the hotel, where we joined two Brethren and wives who had journeyed from Belfast the day before. Now we were nine Brethren and their wives, safely ensconced in Marseille and enjoying the warm, glorious day. After a short rest, three French Brethren arrived in their cars to pick us up at 4.30 p.m. and drove us directly to their Hall, a journey of about fifteen minutes. This left our ladies to enjoy an afternoon in the shops and a hen evening in a restaurant owned by one of the members of the French Lodge.
Their Hall is impressive, quite modern, and lies in a pleasant suburb of Marseille. It also houses a licensed restaurant open to the public. The Lodge room we were to use was very tastefully decorated, complete with a ceiling lit to resemble the night sky. With the meeting due to start at 7.15, it seemed a long time to allow for photographs — and a very long time to be at the "refreshment counter". There appeared to be no explanation as to why we were picked up at 4.30, until one of our merry bunch was spirited away to a practice for the Provincial meeting the following day, when the new St. Patrick's Lodge was to be created. "You are to be an honorary founding member of St. Patrick's," he was told! And so the practice started, with a delighted and confused 43 member wondering what was going on as the proceedings were discussed, acted out, argued over, and finalised in a French equivalent of "it will be all right on the night."
Then the Lodge meeting began, and we processed in with the "Vénérable Maître" and were seated on the dais on one side of the W.M., with all the Marseille Provincial Officers on the other. Not only was the Lodge laid out differently, but so were the proceedings — different, but recognisable. The highlight of the evening was a First Degree, where a medical Professor was given the works: a sight to behold, with much drama, complete with sound and lighting effects. With the exchange of gifts of jewels and our feeble attempts at fraternal sentiments expressed in broken French, we were left in no doubt as to how privileged they felt at our presence.
After the meeting came a gorgeous meal, cooked by the permanent restaurant staff and accompanied by wine, jokes, and the forging of new friendships, the night finishing off at about 1.00 a.m. Then back to the hotel, expecting the ladies to be fast asleep — not so; there they all were, with the night porter busy keeping the drinks flowing, and they seemed to be even noisier than we were.
The next day — Saturday 17th March, St. Patrick's Day — we congregated at 10.30 in the hotel lobby to be dressed in our shamrock and driven by our new French friends to Saint-Maximin, a small town about 50 km from Marseille. The Provincial meeting to inaugurate the new St. Patrick's Lodge was to be held in a hotel that had started life as a 13th-century monastery. What a place — complete with medieval quadrangle, cloisters, the works! First the banquet, accompanied by many toasts and good food (not so sure about the squid, though), and great interest in our shamrock and its significance. The explanation of St. Patrick's use of the shamrock to illustrate the Holy Trinity conjured up a vivid demonstration of the difficulty Patrick must have had as he tried to teach us Irish, only to be met with what could only be translated as "Yeh whaa?"
Then the Provincial meeting, including the ceremony of forming the new Lodge of St. Patrick No. 1594. This dignified and sedate ceremony was a complete contrast to the high drama of the evening before. Again the Irish Brethren were acknowledged and treated with much respect, even to the point of a "43" representative being conducted and presented to the Provincial Grand Master. On closing the meeting, we were all taken back to our hotel — a rather longer journey this time, due to heavy traffic following a football match.
In the evening we were invited, along with our helpmates, to a venue close to the harbour, where dinner was served and we spent a pleasant evening together with the French Brethren and their charming wives — an ideal opportunity to relax and to celebrate both St. Patrick's Day and our friendship, and also to finally get rid of the Supervalue bag! For most of us, the next day it was back to the airport and on to Dublin and Belfast, leaving a few of our gang to see more of what France has to offer. What a shock when we arrived back home: snow, and a wind that would skin a fairy! Our patron saint seems to have been too busy having a good time with us to remember to turn the warm side of the stone up.
The "Supervalue bag" was a plastic supermarket carrier-bag, which we used to transport our gifts to our French Brethren. When posing for photographs, the bag was automatically placed on the ground. How many photographs can you spot it in?