Jonola14

WILL’S WEDDING

Saturday was Will J’s wedding day, so Simon S, Michelle C and I ventured off to the never previously visited area of Northampton for the wedding of two people I had never met face-to-face.

We had booked rooms at the hotel and arrived in fairly good time. ‘A WARM WELCOME’ the moldy green sign boasted as we dragged our bags through the rotting doors, only to be greeting by a ghostly corridor and a reception area with nothing but a solid steel grill over the desk. Thinking we had wandered into a prison, I searched for a telephone to pick up so I could speak to somebody on the other side, but there was no phone, no ‘press for attention’ button, and no prison guard. Whilst Simon searched for other inmates and Michelle gazed bewildered at the greeny brown stains on the walls, I called the mobile number on the wall.

Nobody could be with us for half an hour, so we hung around, checked in, handed over all our personal possessions, belts and shoe laces, and were shown to our cells. After a world record change of clothes, we were let out and sped down the road in search of the church.

We were late, through no fault of our own, and the ceremony had started by the time we arrived. We had missed the first key wedding event. Good start. We made up for it though, by smiling sweetly at the entire congregation as they turned to see who was late, and bellowing out the hymns in our poshest, deepest voices. There was also a comedy moment during the first hymn where we gave it the big finish, put the words down, only to discover the final verse on the other side.

After the ceremony, Simon and I dashed off to change before the speeches. Despite a rapid turn-around, we missed them. We had missed the second key wedding event. We even missed Will’s personal reference to us, in which we were supposed to stand up, courtsey, and take credit for getting the two of them together.

Food, pints of lager and three bottles of pink champagne came and went and soon we were merrily under the control of Lord Alcohol. This might somehow explain how we missed the cutting of the cake. Key wedding event three missed. How we managed it, though, is bizarre, as the cake was on a table right in front of us and we barely moved all evening.

With a large proportion of the guests being Welsh, I was in my element. Speaking in my well-practised Welsh accent I attempted to mimic and learn more Welsh phrases. The best I could muster, though, was ‘Croeso y Cymru, dim ysmrygu’ - Welcome to Wales, no smoking.

Still, we piled into a taxi at the end of the night and headed back to prison where we locked ourselves up (the prison guard was again off duty), and Simon and Michelle chained themselves to the gallows for it was their second anniversary and they felt they deserved to celebrate with some naughty fun.

So, night over, Will married, and enormous quantities of alcohol pumping round our bodies.

The morning arrived and we whiled away the minutes by lobbing up jelly beans for me to catch in my mouth. We were eventually let out for good behaviour and made our merry way back home, despite a brief stop for Simon to catch his breath and fight off the waves of alcohol-induced nausea sweeping over his suffering body.

Northampton is a far slower area of the world, they drive, talk and think slower than anywhere else I have ever been, with the exception of Chester, and customer service simply does not exist.

So, all in all, a splendid weekend and congratulations to Will and Erika Jenkins.