Mahinda’s Little World

After dinner today, I really fancied some ice cream. Fortunately, I had just the thing -  a half-full tub of  black forest cherry Carte D’Or…or so I thought.

There was absolutely no sign of it in the freezer. As it’s a normal-sized freezer compartment, shared between five of us, it’s pretty rammed, but I did have a good look.

Then Housemate Lynda tells me that one of the others had been rearranging some food, and accidentally left it out all day…so of course it thawed completely and had to be thrown away.

Oh well - these things happen.

So I had a look for the two-thirds-full tub of vanilla Carte D’Or, with the intention of having some with a chocolate liqueur topping. 

There was no sign of that one, either. All I came up with was a frozen lump of suspiciously yellow gunk in the top shelf of the freezer. Which smelled, and tasted, suspiciously like vanilla Carte D’Or.

Grrrrrrrrrr!

These things happen, but a note would have been nice. All I wanted was some ice cream

Sometimes, living in a shared house really sucks. 

So, it’s Saturday. Ian’s big day.

I awake to the sound of some chuntering around. Ian, it turns out, got up early and is doing some room-tidying and chucking stuff away. In a move of supreme wisdom, he’s got a house- (well, room-) move that started a couple of days before the wedding.

We get our stuff ready, and Ian takes me to a greasy spoon for a good bit of pre-wedding lard, before heading into Portsmouth. First stop, my hotel…where I couldn’t check in for another ten minutes. Ho hum. So, the next stop was the little hotel where Ian and Nancy would spend the night or two after their wedding, to drop things off for their honeymoon. Of course, it was meant to be a secret location, but never mind.

Then, over to Nancy’s place to drop more things off (I think), then back to the Ibis where I managed to check in. Finally, it was over to Gwen’s place.

Gwen. An absolutely lovely lady who’s one of Nancy’s friends through church, and was going to be one an usher. While the bridesmaids and bride all got ready somewhere else (possibly Hilary’s place, but I really cannot remember!), poor Gwen was left to babysit the groom and a best man. She did a sterling job, even if her CD collection meant resorting to David Gray

Ian, through all this, was nowhere near as nervous as expected.

The buttonholes appeared, and the three of us were ready to go. The weather was absolutely filthy, so we decided that a taxi was best to take us the short distance to the church. Unfortunately, many many other people must have had similar ideas – we spent five minutes, all three of us, phoning frantically. Nothing. So Gwen stepped in and drove us there!

Church

Well, we got to the church in plenty of time, and Marc joined us soon afterwards, as the guests started trickling in. Ushing was done, as was saying hello to various people, and Ian stayed remarkably calm throughout.

The magic hour, 4pm, drew closer, and the bridesmaids appeared, looking resplendent in shades of purple. And then Ian showed his first bit of nerves.

“The bridesmaids are here! What are they doing here?”

Okay, so it was only 3.50pm. Nonetheless, I asked Hilary and Joanne (or “J’anne” as Hilary says it, in her lovely soft South African accent) to step back a little, so they weren’t so much in Ian’s view.

4pm. Nancy arrives pretty much bang on time, and Leslie starts the service. I still cannot believe it actually happened.

It all went fairly smoothly – no rings were dropped, no gaffs were made. AFAIK, anyway. The only minor problems were to do with the train on Nancy’s dress, which Hilary and J’anne had to deal with accordingly. I suspect that Marc and I spent too long at Ian’s side after presenting the rings, but no-one seemed to notice. If they did, it wasn’t commented upon. At least, not to us.

And there you go. IAN GOT MARRIED!

Transit

Once the ceremony was over, everyone had to get across town to HMS Warrior, where the reception was to be held. Fortunately, the filthiness of the day had dropped, but it was still grey and drizzly.

So, with taxis at a premium still, many people decided to walk. I was to get in a minibus that’d been provided by Fred (Nancy’s father) for the wedding party…but ended up giving up my seat for someone else. I was about to talk into the distance when I found out that they’d forgotten Hilary…and there was no more room in the minibus. Instead, it was going to come back for us, and I rounded up stragglers.

Reception

Eventually, we got to HMS Warrior. VERY impressive. There’s more on it here.

Basically, it’s (she’s?) a whopping great ship – the first “ironclad” in the Royal Navy. We took her over for the evening, with the festivities on the main gun deck. It was all wonderfully atmospheric, with huge cannons between the tables and various nautical paraphernalia on the walls.

I missed out on the tours, but the whole ship is now a museum piece, and we were free to wander around as we pleased. I did take the chance to have a wander…some very steep staircases (practically ladders!) were involved – I had enough trouble shimmying up and down to get to the gent’s, so the girlies with silly shoes would definitely have had a bit of trouble! Having said that, there was a “minimum heel size” limit enforced.

Much chatting was done, and a little bit of drinking. Maybe. Wedding party photos were taken inside, due to the aforementioned filthy weather. The photographer, by the way, was very impressive – highly smooth and professional, and friendly to boot. I’m very much looking forward to seeing the pictures one of these days.

The meal was absolutely lovely – hearty fare rather than anything poncey, albeit far in excess of what the Warrior’s sailors would have been used to.

And then it was the speeches. I’d been getting pretty worried, given that it was a large area with low ceilings and lots of twiddly bits – NOT a good space to fill. Fortunately, there was a PA system and a wireless microphone…so Ian coerced me into being the MC and introducing everyone.

Speech

Ian went first, with a “I’m dead chuffed, and so’s my wife” speech. To raucous applause, naturally.

Fred went next, with his father-of-the-bride speech – as expected, he was going to be a hard act to follow.

Marc and I went next, with the speech we’d co-written, edited and re-edited, up until the very last minute. I’d say that he was responsible for most of the final gloss, though, and his delivery was absolutely spot on!

Well, people laughed, and we didn’t overly offend Ian or Nancy’s families…I think. Nancy was happy about it too, so that was that. Mission successful! I do feel a bit guilty, mind, as it was basically a 7-minute “here’s every embarrassing thing that Ian’s ever done” tirade…still, that’s his own fault for not giving us enough material. We did let slip a bit about the stag weekend, too.

He’ll forgive me one day, I’m sure…probably after I’ve gotten married and he wreaks his awful revenge in the form of a reciprocal speech. Let’s just say that finding embarrassing stories about me is going to be A LOT easier

After

More drinking and merriment ensued, until we got turfed out of Warrior at midnight – Ian had already whisked Nancy off to an undisclosed location, where they’d be staying for a night or two before jetting off on honeymoon.

I ended up sharing a cab with Hilary, Gwen and three others…whose names, alas, I really cannot remember. One might have been a Simon. It didn’t take much to coerce me back to Hilary’s place (with the rest of them!) for coffee and chocolates…which was nice. We chatted away, swapped stories about the Lewises, and I heard the story of how Gwen had purchased a pair of earrings with the aid of a banana…but I think that’s one that doesn’t quite come out as well in written form.

Shared a cab back to my hotel with the two lads, and that was that.

All my friends are growing up.

I really must apologise for not doing much blogging recently. I’ve had other, more pressing, things with which to occupy myself.

This weekend, for example. Ian’s wedding. Nancy’s too, but I definitely count as one of the groom’s party. I had the honour of being one of Ian’s two best men - the other, Marc, is a friend from his time in Southampton.

It all started inauspiciously though…

Thursday

A work social, to Samsi Express for cheap Japanese food. It would have been a pretty good feed for the standard £15, never mind the £7.50 that I paid:

• Miso soup
• Soy beans
• Japanese street snacks (little fried things, basically)
• Sushi
• Seafood sukiyaki (soupy noodles)
• Random dessert (apple and strange-but-tasty green things)

The sushi course was the most interesting, as it was make-your-own. You got your seaweed and filled it with sushi rice, ginger, wasabi and your choice of filling. Fillings included mackerel, tuna, salmon, prawns and scallops. It was very nice, and I suppose the make-your-own aspect keeps the cost down.

We ended up going to Fab Café for a nightcap…or glass of Coke in my case, as I was driving.

Now, I’d been feeling rough all day, and it was getting worse. Various colds have been doing the rounds, and I’d caught one of them. My cunning plan was to get home early, do some work on the best men’s speech, then go to bed.

I did get home early, but went straight to bed. I turned out to be slightly feverish, which led to me having a long string of uneasy "wedding nervousness" dreams. Not exactly my job to worry, really, but the fever did it!

The best of the lot was the one where I was speaking to Marc (t’other best man) in the church, just before the ceremony was to take place, when we realised that Ian wasn’t with us any more - I turned round to see him actually RUNNING out of the church!

The others included the usual "bride not turning up" and, more understandably, "best men’s speech getting no laughter at all".

Friday

So, I woke up, feeling a bit groggy, treated myself to some serious Lemsip, packed my bags, and drove down to Tom and Amy’s place in Sandbach.

Amy, as sister of the bride, was doing a reading, so they needed to be at the 6.30pm wedding rehearsal as well. I was very grateful of the lift down south, as it’d give me more time on The Speech.

As they’d have lots of luggage, and an extra passenger on the way back (and me, of course), Tom and Amy had hired a car for the weekend. They were rather hopeful of a Honda Accord, which is what the hire company claimed as their default for that class…so they were a bit miffed to get an MG ZT, which is basically a spruced-up Rover 75.

It did drive nicely, though, and was comfortable enough. The more time we spent in the car, though, the more little problems we found. Like the CD player only operating through the speakers on one side of the car…the radio was fine, but wouldn’t retune stations when drifting out of range…general build quality was naff…and so on. The "satnav" in particular was something rather special - rather than a dreary conventional map-screen, you get one button. Just one button. You press it, and the car phones someone (presumably in either Scotland or Bangalore), who asks you about your journey. Blokey then gets a route and sends it back to the car, which then tells you to do stuff every so often.

Needless to say, we didn’t try this feature.

Anyway, the wedding stuff.

We got to Portsmouth well before 5pm, eventually found Tom and Amy’s hotel (I was crashing at Ian’s place for the night), and checked in. Dave had, true to form, arrived already, with Kate (his girlfriend) in tow. Amy went for a lie-down, while I took Tom, Dave and Kate to an absolutely lovely pub I’d found (with the aid of the Good Beer Guide) the last time I’d been in Portsmouth.

The Hole in the Wall - an absolutely cracking pub, which had gotten a full-page write-up in What’s Brewing? last year. Sorted!

It’s a proper back-street boozer, full of dark wood (and a designated "Grumpy Old Men" bench), with very fine ales, a tiny snug, and a real fire.

Unfortunately, Tom and I had a wedding rehearsal at 6.30pm, so we satisfied ourselves with two halves each. We left Dave and Kate to their own devices and headed over to the church (St. Jude’s, Southsea - pretty impressive for a church website!).

There we found Ian and the rest - Nancy, both sets of family, plus various others such as ushers, a bridesmaid and, of course, the curate. Ecclesiastical positions not exactly being my forté, I’ll refer to her as Leslie (which may be doing her a great disservice if she’s actually a Lesley).

Now, I’ve been to plenty of weddings, but I’d never been anything official before. I suppose it doesn’t really happen often - while girls may be bridesmaids a few times, blokes tend not to be ushers or best men very often. But I digress.

I’d not seen the family Lewis for years - about three in the case of Ruth (Ian’s mother), but I’d not seen Michael (his father) or Caroline (sister) since the mid-90s. They really haven’t changed much, apart from the fact that my perspective has changed to that of an adult talking to adults rather than a fairly sheepish child talking to a friend’s parents.

Anyway, the rehearsal went pretty smoothly (Marc, t’other best man, arrived shortly, accompanied by Shadi, his girlfriend), and then it was off to Rosie’s Vineyard for what turned out to be a rather nice meal – just the groom’s party, i.e. immediate family, Marc, Shadi and me. Sort of a “saying goodbye” to the single Ian. The Prestons were doing the same for Nancy, somewhere else.

It’s the sort of place that has only a small menu, but full of dishes that you’d really want to eat. Highly tasty…and nothing at all like the Rosie’s in Chester.

After that, Ian and I bade adieu to the various parents, before walking back to Nancy’s flat, picking up her car (and some stuff), then driving back to his place in Southampton for the night.

Drank some water and settled down with his housemates (plus Lisa) to watch The Longest Yard. Not exactly intellectual, but fun enough. Had some sparkling cava that the housemates had got to celebrate Ian’s big day. I spent an hour in the living room writing cue cards and generally trying to sort out The Speech, then crashed on Ian’s floor.