Last Saturday my mum got married. Nice guy, like him no issue there. Though attending the wedding of your own parent doesn't stop being weird, and nor does seeing their name changed.
This is the new family.
The three lads there, me, my brother Ben and new bother Ollie were ushers. In this capacity we apparently let everyone sit wherever they liked, breaking the tradition of friend of bride/friend of groom division, the mixing could not have been more complete. The first of many wedding traditions to be averted, or outright subverted.
We three ushers also had scheduled readings during the ceremony, and the only readings at that (besides the constant ministering). Ben went first, reading the bit about lobe from
Captain Corelli's Mandolin, chosen by mum (and not, as I had suggested, the Chemical Basis for Love article from Wikipedia, or the one about deep-sea anglerfish mating strategy). Then Ollie, with was a poem about weddings conjured from somewhere, also, I believe (perhaps mistakenly) chosen for him.
I, however, I was asked not only to write my own reading, but to compose a poem for the occasion. Hey, thanks mum! Not stressful at all. To be fair, I was offered a get-out several months in advance, but I cannot deny that the challenge had not been accepted in the back of my mind. Certainly my original acceptance had not been at the fore-front of my mind, since I wasn't listening to the request at all when I absent-mindedly assented. As I recall I was distracted by the task of carefully constructing a rod for my own back.
So on the day, at the end of the ceremony, I stood up in front of family and friends old and new, the first time many would have ever seen me, and, shaking terribly, drew from my pocket the loop of bog roll onto which I had hastily scrawled my poem only that morning.
Many later expressed their regret that no one had been recording it. The poem itself, entitled "
Tears of an Unfinished Wedding Recital," can read here.
It was a roaring success! Better than I could have expected, and my relief cannot be expressed in words. If I'd had known that in advance I might have paid attention to the service and not instead busied myself with feverish breathing exercises that I made up.
The day went marvellously after that. The near-continuous congratulations and affirmations made me feel pretty good, I may even have emerged from my metaphorical shell a little. My friends turned up for the party and I witnessed the disturbing sight of my cousins, whom I held as babies, getting drunk.
Anyway, good time, good time. Also, I caught Herpes simplex off of a fake moustache. Hurrah!
