Wedding

I am still not at home. In fact I am sitting in our camper van in the car park of a cricket club at the end of a wedding, drinking coffee and rubbing my sore feet and getting ready to move off.

Of course it was a lovely wedding, well worth all the trauma of trying to get ready and actually get there on time. We had it all beautifully planed, except I discovered far too late that  the clock in the camper van was half an hour slow.

I had been having a lovely morning. Mark had run an extension cable across and plugged it into the electricity at my parents’ house. He was busy helping my brother, who was putting a date stone in the wall of their house. For some reason that entertained my brother he had put the wrong date on it, this made him laugh a great deal, and actually made me laugh as well, in a puzzled sort of way, unusual humour is no less enjoyable than the normal sort at times.

Anyway, whilst they were occupied creating puzzles for future historians I had an immensely satisfying morning of cleaning the camper out with great ease, because of the handy electricity,  hoovering it and cleaning the cupboards out and polishing the taps and making it feel lovely. It is really hard to do this at home, because usually there is nowhere close to the house where we can park it, on account of it being roughly the size of a juggernaut and car parking spaces being in demand especially at Easter, and people get grumpy if you try and run extension leads through the bus stop and things.

I was industriously scrubbing the sink out when my mother shouted from the house that she had made us lunch, and I abandoned it and went in, only to realise that it was already half an hour later than I wanted it to be, and we were late.

It all got a bit frantic after that. The children needed scrubbing and after Mark’s exertions with the date stone and my morning disinfecting the loo, so did we, and we filed through the shower in great haste. It is so complicated to get dressed when you are going somewhere nice. There are earrings and tights and perfume to be thought about as well as all the usual issues of clean knickers and a handkerchief, and it is impossible to put on tights in the same room as your husband and retain even a glimmer of mystique, not that he noticed, he was fiddling with his tie and swearing.

We were almost ready until I got downstairs and realised to my utter horror that my jacket had a stain on the back of the shoulder, which involved some seriously panicky flapping about. This is because it is a beautiful cream going out jacket and of course I wear it for weddings and smart parties at which inevitably I drink far too much and either spill things myself or get giggly and rowdy with other people who do.

I had to cover it up with a sophisticated chiffon scarf belonging to my mother, and then spent the whole wedding fiddling with it to make sure it was still in the right place which I couldn’t see anyway, and encouraging Mark to put his arm round my shoulders and over the top of it.

It was all very lovely. People look so beautiful at weddings, lots of flowers and vivid colours and silks and gorgeous streamlined suits. The vicar was actually really entertaining, which is always a pleasant surprise, the laughs were real and not polite, and everybody cheered and clapped. I have always been told that one must not do this in church, and so enjoyed it very much in a rebellious sort of way.

The  bride was beautiful and relaxed and laughed a lot, and the groom looked astonished at his amazing good luck, which is entirely the way it ought to be, and of course the best thing about it was looking along the pew at my own beautiful family, and my kindly husband, and remembering our own happy and terrifying day, when we knew each other hardly at all and made lots of rash promises to love each other for ever, which fortunately turned out to be a really good idea. I hope theirs turns out just as splendidly.

The reception afterwards was at the village cricket club, and it was absolutely packed. Oliver had hardly got through the door before he joined forces with another small oik-in-a-tie and that was all we saw of him apart from spotting passing expressions of irritation on people’s faces as several over excited boys charged past them, hiding under tables and generally being underfoot.

We drank and looked and talked and ate huge platefuls of some sort of very nice pie, and saw people I hadn’t seen for years, and it was all very pleasing and celebratory. I am rubbish at being social, I feel intrusive asking questions and never know what to say to people, but one of my friends from school was there who does it brilliantly, who has the knack of telling you funny things and making you feel as though you are really interesting yourself, so that made it very easy and friendly.

At the end we retired to the camper, and I tore the shoes off with the utter joy that men who don’t wear heels will never know, and tugged a pair of jeans on and we walked the dog round the field before we had coffee and got ready to go: which is in fact now. Lucy is asleep, and Oliver is almost asleep, and Mark is washing the coffee cups, and I am writing to you, and we are sleepy and happy and comfortable and off to find somewhere to put ourselves for the night.

See you tomorrow.