I went to a wedding yesterday. Awww, that’s nice. Always nice. But there’s weddings, and then there’s WEDDDINGGGGSSS!!!! This was the latter. Definitely the latter. It was so big you could sell your invitation on Stub-Hub. It was so grand I wore something around my neck. Not a noose, but a bow tie!! And it was so splendid and wonderful that there was hour after hour of wonderful things happening.

So we did the service. Which was magnificently magnificent in a really magnificent way. Brides, grooms, rabbis, singers, parents, rings, songs, dancing, all surrounded by the entire rose department of New Covent Garden market.

And then we breezed along into the reception area. (You do a lot of ‘breezing’ at the Dorchester, its that kind of place). Because that’s where they kept the booze hidden. But we found it. Lots of it. In a whole variety of colours and sizes. But wait… I smelt food… hmmmm…

The purpose of the ‘reception’ is to kill time before dinner and allow the newlyweds to be photographed with each and every combination and permutation of the guest pool. With the bride’s family, with the groom’s. With the extended families, with the cousins, with the ‘friends’ (because relatives do NOT fall into that category as most are hated by someone or other). The bride with the groom’s friends, the groom groping the bride’s friends, those cousins on the groom’s side who support Chelsea filmed with the friends of the bride’s who vote for the Greens. And so it goes on.

But there’s only so much you can drink whilst all this is going on. So they send round nibbles. Which, for a natural pig like me, are always the high point of any event. And they were good. Sensational. Little duck and hoi-sin pancakes, fish’n’chips in a little cone, hummus and flat-bread, smoked salmon roll-things, and more. But as I stumbled back to the bar I found a little ‘food station’. Like a train station but no-one was on strike. And instead of trains they had those tiny little burgers, ‘sliders’ and… drum roll… sausages! Both little real sausages and little ‘Vienna’, hot-dog type sausages. Ketchup. Mustard. Everything a man could wish for, all on one little table. From which I was never, ever going to leave. These are MY sausages and burgers, FUCK OFF AND GET YOUR OWN ELSEWHERE!!! If you touch them I will kill you.

But after just a few short hours they took them away!!!! Even though I was standing there with a carrier bag. And a glass of whisky. Just in case. But no, I was forced, dragged screaming, into dinner. Which took hours and hours because someone decided that the best way to digest course number 1 is to dance and leap around violently for half an hour to prepare you for course number 2. You’d think doctors would know better (both bride and groom) but no. I kept checking but they never brought the sausages back.

Which, as disappointments go, was not really the biggest of my life, it just felt like it at the time. Nothing compared to, f’rinstance, Belgium’s disappointment over their result. I bet Kevin de Bruyne wished he’d come to the wedding too.

Happy Monday

A xxxx