I AIN'T NEVER SEEN A ELEPHANT FLY

There was a show on Radio 4 where the usual suspects got to do stuff they have never done before.

I say the usual suspects, for if an alien arrived on earth and decided to land here rather than in the backwoods of Nebraska at midnight (and abduct the stupidest person for a thousand miles as they usually tend to do based on those satellite TV shows: "UFOs are they real? Compelling evidence" followed by blurred footage of hub caps, frisbees and witness statements from idiots and the gullible), they would - after a cursory glance at the TV - realise that the world is ruled by one man and a coterie of sycophants. Step forward the ubiquitous Stephen Fry; a hugely talented man who has cornered the market in, er, everything!

The premise of the show which, after starting on radio like so many ideas, was snatched by TV. Although he didn't present it he was a guest on one of the episodes.

I've never seen I've Never Seen... so can only guess that the "star" (from now on known as “the Fry”) gets to experience things they never have had before.

It is nice to try new things and I am a firm believer that new experiences keep us alive.

Having said that, Dr Strangelove the Producer, had Friday off as he was trying a new experience. He had been invited to the Brits. He, as you know from listening to the Shoe, is well-versed in the ways of the VIP but this was a first for him, within the narrow confines of Strangeoworld which revolves around the gym, important meetings, schmoozing celebs and the areas in nightclubs behind the coloured rope where us mere mortals are not allowed.

It must have been quite a weekend as judging by the look of him this morning he had been carousing solidly for 72 hours. (Possibly a new experience)

Dark Lady and I had had a peaceful and relaxed and tranquil weekend in comparison as we headed off to France. Oddly (certainly for me) we ate and drank sparingly; in fact not a drop of alcohol passed our lips (unlike Strangeo!).

We lit the fire and watched some DVDs, from the sublime Sherlock Holmes with Robert Downey Jr. (a Guy Ritchie film that I really enjoyed - a new experience!) to an Adam Sandler film that we hated, Billy Madison (a new experience also).

Sunday morning we woke up and peered through the window and to our delight a first for the Dark Lady and only my third sighting in 20 years a red squirrel was sitting in the tree outside.

A new experience for her and a nearly new experience for me.

What would be a totally new experience however for everyone would be to peer through the window out into a frosty Normandy morning and see Stephen Fry sitting in the tree. Although I expect he has done that already, or the TV show, Fry's Wood, is already at the pilot stage.

JUST LOOK AT THEM BOOTS!

It always amazes me how long it takes before things settle down to normal after Christmas and New Year.

Every year we grumble about how Christmas is starting earlier and earlier and yet not sure we make the same distinction with the post-New Year period.

As I outlined yesterday being a bit of a curmudgeon and having suffered from curmudegeonliness for many years now, I quite like the year as it runs without any sudden changes brought on by Bank holidays and Festivities.

Before you leap down my throat at my lack of joy I may tell you that I am trying to get Curmudgeon classified as a bona fide medical condition.

"What is it Doctor"?

"Bad news....I'm afraid you are in the early stages of Curmudgeon."

"Can you do anything?”

"I'm afraid not....it’s progressive. Early symptoms include railing against Bank Holiday traffic jams, then it progresses through to how Christmas was better when you were a child and how people knew the value of things. Eventually, I am afraid, you'll be shouting at Trick or Treaters and won't find Del Boy falling through the open bar flap in Only Fools and Horses anything other than profoundly irritating."

"How long have I got?"

"Depends when the run up to Christmas starts"

If I get this off the ground there could be scope for good, honest, hard-working people to dig deep and fund the research which I would selflessly undertake in the Cayman Islands.

I would also try and get the news of this awful condition out there by getting people to retweet me on Twitter so that we get

#curecurmudgeon trending.

That and maybe a selection of Z-listers will get together to make a charity record of stunning awfulness. However, as it is for charity, radio and TV will be forced to feature it.

You can get that trending too

#terriblerecordsforgenuinegoodcauses

However, now that everything is turning to the usual post New Year drudgery it also meant that I could try out my Christmas present.

Dark Lady bought me a pair of skates.

As you are aware - if you read the blog regularly and listen to the show - I have been having secret skating lessons with instructor Shirelle at Alexandra Palace in London.

She is very long-suffering as she stopped me crashing to the ice on many occasions and still does. She also doesn't shout at me when my attempts to turn or skate backwards fail miserably. Her skills are remarkable as she has managed to get Chico sufficiently well-trained that he is now on the latest series of Strictly X Ice Come.

However, it may be beyond her to get me up to that standard.

Although having said that....I was out on the ice yesterday in my new boots having had hired ones up to that point. They are such a difference; like rocket sleds so I can fail to go backwards or turn far faster than I ever did before.

As we were skating along two teenage girls skated up and one said:

"’Ere Mister. You bin on the telly?”

"Er, well yes (puffing himself up with pride at the recognition). I've been on Eggheads and have also done two episodes of Call My Bluff among other cameo roles!”

#pompousarse

“Nah , I said 'ave you ever bin on telly?”

With that they skated off. Unaccountably my feet started to ache at that point so I went home.

#crushedcurmudgeon

MERRY XMAS EVERYBODY

After the honeymoon it was headlong toward Christmas and New Year. Dark Lady is a big fan of the festive season; I am not fussed. I am more of the Grinch in that it is expensive, crowded and raises unrealistic expectations. To me Christmas day is a day like any other. This may be due to spending more than 30 years working (Yes, I know what I do isn't really work) over this period and not having children meant that it was a day when the roads were quiet and everything seemed shut and so it was impossible to go down the pub in the evening.

Having said that this year was going to be slightly different in that I had a ready-made family. Jamie, my Stepson (who you can see and hear in the video - click here - giving a bit of his speech) wanted dumb bells from me for the big day. So I had trudged down to a sports store and dragged 25kg of weights back home and wrapped them best I could. The only proviso is that he doesn't drop them on the floor of his bedroom as they will doubtless go straight through into the living room beneath. Bearing in mind I have already damaged the ceiling once by removing a troublesome smoke alarm and replacing it with a new one…in so doing tearing a strip of paper off the roof where the paint had stuck it to the unit. I am wary of causing further damage directly or indirectly.

Ella, my Stepdaughter, is artistic and so I bought her an easel and some paint and brushes. The proviso here being that she didn't try and re-paint the house (even where I had damaged it!) Nor did she try and repaint her younger brother no matter how annoying she thought he was!

Dark Lady had skates which turned out to be a tad too small so I had to take them back to the shop.

Christmas Eve dawned and it was a family evening with a groaning table. DL likes to cook nearly as much as she likes to over-cater.

After the show it was off to the Midlands to collect my Dad who - at 85 - has decided to stop driving. Other than that it was business as usual: he provided the wine, I did the cheese and biscuits, my Sister did the cooking and my Brother-in-Law did the washing up. This is the perfect division of labour, if you ask me.

I took several pictures but unfortunately this was the best of a very bad lot. My Sister is the nose on the far right. There is a little more of her in real life, otherwise she would be touring the halls in carnival or being studied by scientists.

After filling myself up with gargantuan portions of food it was into the car and back down to the Dark Lady's house.

"Are you hungry?” she asked, as I opened the door.

...I ate some more anyway.

After the show the following day I went back to bed as DL slaved in the kitchen and the children did whatever children do in their bedrooms. I think as adults we know the sort of things that they do as they are pretty much the same as we did when we were their age, but nowadays there is more electricity used.

The idea was that we were going to have a slap up buffet feed and my gorgeous wife was in over catering mood once again. She loves to cook and prepare food with attention to detail. She is also the world’s biggest fan of avocados, maybe even more than our own Alan Dedicoat who is also a huge fan. This proved to be her downfall.

You may remember the film Oh God starring George Burns as God and John Denver who he has decided is going to be his messenger on Earth. In a conversation, Denver’s character asks if he made any mistakes when creating the world.

"Avocados. Made the stones too big. Ostriches. No damn use to anybody".

About noon I was awoken from my slumbers by a scream from the kitchen. At first I thought it may be one of characters in one of Jamie's “shoot ‘em up” computer games. It wasn't; it was the Dark Lady. In attempting to remove the stone from an avocado she had sliced through her middle finger.

There was blood. She was holding a towel over her hand. There was then a car and a drive to A&E. I had to drop her off in order to find somewhere to park. When I arrived in Casualty she had already been assessed:

"Is it hanging off?”

"No"

"Wait over there."

We enjoyed our Boxing Day together. The two of us. Although there were quite a number of strangers about. Some moaning, others groaning and some - like the DL - being stoic…

We were there for four hours.

When she had been patched up it was back home for the rest of the day.

Her middle finger had suffered such a slice that it is now numb as the nerve has been severed, but luckily the tendon only suffered minor damage and the artery was unscathed. This was discovered during an operation the following Thursday where surgeons with very big glasses realigned and stitched the nerve sheath and generally tidied things up. No driving for a month and think this will put the skating on hold for a similar period as well.

Just so that they knew which hand to operate on they marked her forearm. I am not a surgeon but would think any medic worth his/her salt would tend to go for the hand with the bandage, that generally being a clue as to where the injury lay.

When we got home we threw the avocado away.


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ONE AND ONE IS TWO

Here we are back with the daily(ish) blog after the Xmas and New Year festivities so I will quickly (for me) wrap up the last bits of the weeding and the honeymoon and then it will be headlong into 2012 and all that it may bring.

After the wedding and the reception, which was the most amazing day (You can see a montage of events on the link which the fabulous photographer Neale James has done for us by clicking here. Hankies ready though, it does it for us every time). When Edwina Hayes started to sing it finished everyone off so Glenda the registrar had to hand out tissues to the assemble throng.

After what seemed a decent interval we retired to bed (a fancy four-poster!) and had about three hours before we had to get up and set off for the airport. As we lay there mulling over the days events (filthy-minded readers may use this is a euphemism), we were aware that our room was directly above the bar area. So we listened to Clive, Matthew and Hirsty, among others, pontificating about life, the universe and everything from beneath our bed which was rather an unnerving experience. It was almost as if they were in the room with us! Had any of them uttered the words "left 'and dahn a bit" we would have called the cops.

A very early start and off to Heathrow. When we arrived and we walked towards the check-in desk, the Dark Lady grabbed me by the shoulders and steered me towards the Upper Class check-in; she had been saving all year to spring this surprise on me.

CLANG! This was the sound my jaw made as it hit the ground. I have only really been economy before. This was a whole different experience and one that I doubt I will experience again but it has spoiled me for air travel from now on.

We rented the same apartment in New York where we had been the previous year and DL had been wondering why I was so concerned that the rain stayed away. The following day dawned bright and sunny so I suggested a walk in Central Park. A few minutes and we were at the Wollman outdoor ice rink.

She has always wanted to skate in Central Park and little did she know I had been having secret skating lessons. (You can see the results on my Facebook page).

"Shall I have go"?

"If you want to, but don't worry! I don't want you falling and hurting yourself!"

"Oh alright. I'll give it a go. You go on ahead and I'll just hang around the edge clutching the barrier"

"OMG"!!

It was scarcely a Robin Cousins moment but I wobbled around reasonably proficiently much to the Dark Lady’s surprise

We were only in New York for a week but we had the best time.

DL bought tickets for Jersey Boys which was wonderful and spectacularly sweary which I wasn't expecting but was delighted by. A notice in the foyer warned:

"Genuine New Jersey Language is used at this performance"

We walked all over the place in the wind and the rain. We walked the High Line. Visited Katz's Deli where "that scene" from the film When Harry met Sally was shot and was delighted that it wasn't a tourist trap. Visited the Tenement Museum and was horrified at the conditions people lived under. Skated a few more times. Went to the Radio City Music Hall Christmas Spectacular. Which it was.

Then on the penultimate night I surprised "the wife" with tickets to The Book of Mormon, a show which has won 9 Tony awards and is sold out for months. We saw it mid-December and I bought the tickets the previous July. It was howlingly funny. The songs were brilliant and it was one of the rudest shows in the most dubious taste I think I have ever witnessed. Not entirely sure of the accuracy of some of the religious statements but from what little I know, the sight of one of the Elders kneeling in front of Adolf Hitler performing a (Tabloid euphemism coming up) "sex act" on him whilst surrounded by dancing coffee cups in a number entitled "Mormon Hell Dream", I think it would give any self-respecting member of the Church of Jesus Christ and Latter Day Saints pause to consider their belief. However, having said that no one ever said "Faith" was logical.

We had the most wonderful time and it all went so wonderfully well we thought it would be nice to get married again every so often. Same person I hasten to point out. If she'd have me. I fancy a Las Vegas Elvis job next time!

MAKE SOMEONE HAPPY

After breakfast and once I had returned from taking the car home, Simon (one of my Groomsmen) and I went for a walk along the riverbank and we chatted about this and that; mainly how we had been friends for such a long time and how pleased he was to see me so happy after all these years. I also started to feel a little odd.

The ceremony wasn't until about 4pm so we had plenty of time to kill. However, Best Men were needed to do Best Men-related things. This meant lanterns and candles and battery powered candles and their placing, so I was left to fend for myself

I had checked out of my garret from the previous night so took up residence in Simon's room where I tried to avoid seeing the Dark Lady who was only next door as I gather it is bad luck.

The time dragged. I began to feel weirder. Up to this point (apart from the stress of the day before, trying to get everything and everybody in the right place) I had been very relaxed about the whole wedding thing.

I was beginning to get all emotional. I have always been a big weeper. Music can reduce me to tears very easily, as can film and TV. Being a contrary wise character I am generally unmoved by the mawkish and sentimental. However, if I have had a couple of drinks and start to read the obituaries in the local paper where well-meaning folk have ordered up one of those off-the-peg verses to illustrate the loss of a loved one, you know the sort of thing:

"I sit and wonder every day
Why the Lord chose to call you away
I think he saw you needed rest
He only takes the very best"

…I do start to wobble. Yet along with many I also find myself wanting to snigger. This apparently is a common thing at funerals where emotions are heightened.

This, however, was to be a day of celebration and I - at the grand old age of 55 - had found my soul mate; the woman of my dreams, the person I wanted to spend the rest of my days with.

I still felt very odd. Sitting in the hotel room listening to people scurrying back and forth wondering at what time I should change. The time hung heavy.

Luckily guests started to arrive from further afield. Nerd Night DJ's began to arrive from the north of England. Janice Long arrived with partner Paul and Dr Strangelove looking sharp in a new suit (the elegantly-tailored whistle hiding the full horror of his terrible legs!) We stood in the bar and I drank water. If I was going to weep I didn't want it to be made worse by having had a drink or two. Also I may get dehydrated so it seemed sensible to top up.

I was looking forward to being a husband and a Stepfather. I had no doubts about that but I still felt a bit like a condemned man. Maybe it was the waiting?

Neale James, the photographer, provided a welcome respite as he had been rushing around photographing all and sundry and arrived to take a few pictures of me as I squeezed myself into my finery. He also expertly pinned my buttonhole to my jacket as my sausage fingers had ceased to work.

At last it was time and in the gathering gloom we made the short walk to Rye Town Hall. I now began to panic as one very important guest had still to arrive. Without her this would blow a massive hole in the proceedings. I hoped the Dark Lady hadn't got wind of this. Simon hadn't seen them nor had Clive. As is the law I had to go and meet the Registrar and Glenda, who was going to conduct the ceremony in an anteroom.

I was now feeling very, very weird.

At first there seemed to be a problem with my names. I have rather a lot and not all of them are "Christian" or "given" names. I have an extra one: "Phillips". It isn't a double-barrelled name. it is a name my paternal Grandfather took as a thanks to the parents of a friend of his whom he lived with after falling out with his Dad. We pretty nearly have all have it including my Father and my Sister. Registrar, who was American, was finding it hard to grasp due to the paperwork that had come from the Hastings office. When I had applied for the licence months ago they weren't sure what to do with the name or where to place it on the forms. This was foxing them. So not only was I feeling very strange, a vital component of the ceremony was still in transit and I feared the thing wouldn't go ahead because of an intractable problem with one of my names.

All was eventually agreed and as I was doing a bit of signing off official documents I saw a smiling Simon give me the thumbs up from the doorway: the missing member had arrived.

With a few minutes to kill before the start and whilst the DL was being grilled in the antechamber I sauntered into the hall. It was packed with our friends and relatives. I began to fill up. We had spent weeks deciding on some background music for the event to be played before and after the ceremony and every song meant something to us. Every so often, when there was a lull in the conversation, I would just make out a few bars of a tune or song. This made me fill up even more! My Sister came over to buck me up a bit and our Witness, Susan the Finance (don't hate her she's not a banker), who introduced us in the first place also came over and told me in no uncertain terms to "hold it together".

This was awful. I was going to breakdown and howl all the way through my own wedding. If things got much worse I would start moaning and gnashing and wailing. It wouldn't be a day of joy, it would look like a Middle Eastern funeral!

We took our positions. Glenda, me, standing at the front, everyone else stood up and then Jimmy Durante struck up "Make Someone happy".

My eyes began to mist up...oh no, I was going...where was my hankie?....."MAN UP!" I can hear you screaming at your screen. This was terrible! How was I going to get through the next thirty minutes???? Perhaps now was the time for strategic fainting as we have discussed on the show so many times over the years.

Then the doors opened and I saw her...The Dark Lady

O....M.....G!!!!!!!!!!!!!

She stood taking in the scene. She looked fantastic and the dress was amazing and perfect; I was the world’s luckiest man without a doubt. An audible gasp was heard around the room as she walked slowly down the aisle behind her beautiful daughter, Ella, who was the prefect bridesmaid. On the arm of her, son Jamie, who was doing "giving away" duty as her Father was sadly long gone. I suddenly felt very calm and immensely proud. Everything was going to be just fine.

Glenda was brilliant and put everyone at their ease and we didn't have to worry about remembering what to say at what time. I was obviously so keen to make DL mine that I leapt in with "I do" slightly earlier than I should have and the DL got her own name wrong! We were relaxing into now and enjoying it as we stood at the front. There were a few damp eyes but everyone seemed to be having a good time. During the vows the emotion hit me again so the ones we had written for each other came out in a strangled gasp from me. And the official ones had me doing the laughing at funeral bit. One particularly long one and I had to ask Glenda to repeat as I said, "I'm sorry I have short term memory problems"!

We had had laughter and love and the serious side and then it was time for our special guest. The one who I worried wouldn't arrive in time.

When the Dark Lady and I first met, one of the many things we found in common was our love of music. Riffling through her iPod I found a song that I loved and had featured on the show before as part of "Lester’s Library" some time ago, as well as other tunes performed or written by this artist.

She had come to the song and the singer via the soundtrack to the film, My Sister’s Keeper, starring Cameron Diaz.

I refer, of course, to Randy Newman's "Feels Like Home" performed by Edwina Hayes.

A few months back I had contacted Edwina and asked if she would do us the honour of singing at our wedding. To our delight, she agreed.

The effect was astonishing, the whole atmosphere changed as she began to sing. We were suddenly aware that as the lyrics and the melody hit home every single person in that room burst into tears! (You can see a video, not from the wedding, here).

We mopped up and when the sniffling had halted we carried on with Annie, DL's "Best Woman", doing a terrific job of reading the lyrics of "I Want To Grow Old With You" by Adam Sandler from the film, The Wedding Singer. Google it, it’s lovely.

With that we were married. I suddenly had a wonderful wife and two lovely step children. I was a very lucky man. We left to the applause and cheers of the audience to the strains of "Bring me Sunshine" by Morecombe and Wise. It suddenly occurred to me: I didn't feel weird any longer!

"HERE COMES THE BRIDE"

Dark Lady and the friends who had arrived the day before and had been enjoying things on sticks and drinks gradually one by one drifted off to bed, leaving me with my Groomsmen, Clive and Simon. Eventually they too flagged and I was left on my own. What to do. To have another drink? Followed by another and eventually be found face down on the bar at 6am?

No. I headed for my hotel which was a few streets away. I had booked months ago and when I arrived had been greeted with the words, "Do you want the good or the bad news"? Considering the stresses of the previous few hours I opted for the bad news first with the warning that I had had a day of bad news so bad had actually better mean good rather than bad and the good should be a lot gooder than good!

The hotelier looked at me baffled.

"We've double booked your room"

"?!"

"The good news is we have upgraded you"

He proceeded to grab a candle (artistic licence here) and we began to climb the stairs.

Up and up we went treads creaking followed after several flights by joints creaking until eventually we arrived in the attic. Helpful pieces of rope hung from the rafters so you didn’t hit your head on the beams, although if a gust of wind had blown out your candle you would think you were being attacked by very heavy cobwebs. Just think of the size of the spider that could knit that, arachnophobes!!

I was shown into my "upgraded" room. It was clean and comfortable and had a double bed. It was also very small. Not all the bulbs worked and they had had to create a shower room by boxing off the corner of the room. There was a bewildering array of switches, some of which worked the shower. others did the hot water and some even did the lights.

Still wide awake I tried the TV. The satellite reception was poor and so channels kept freezing of pixellating. In the end I managed to find a documentary on Lionel Richie and watched that until about 2am. Then thinking of my friends and family struggling to sleep in a haunted hotel I switched off the light at the fifteenth attempt after starting the shower and boiling the kettle accidentally and readied myself for a calm and dreamless sleep to awake refreshed ready for the big day.

BOY WAS I WRONG...

A storm had sprung up sometime between "Hello" and "Dancing on the Ceiling". I was in the attic. The rain drummed on the roof. It lashed the tiny draughty window, the building groaned and shuddered and in between heroic gusts it had woken people all over the hotel. So what do people who wake up in the middle of the night do? They go to the loo. They may opt for a relaxing bath and they certainly want to avail themselves of the complimentary tea and coffee making facilities.

This all requires water. Where does that come from? Yes, well done amateur plumbers; it comes from the cold water tank which generally is placed in the, er, attic - in this case directly outside my room with the pipes embedded in the wall behind the bed.

“This is rather noisy”, he said. Ever the champion of understatement.

A few short hours later and a lengthy cramped shower I met my friends for breakfast at the Mermaid who were also hosting the reception. They had done a fine job laying a large table for a dozen or so. This also enabled the guests from various sides of the aisle to get to know each other. There were a lot of mutual friends there but apart from the Dark Lady who of course for wedding etiquette reasons was nowhere to be seen before the ceremony, no one had met my Best Men: Simon from school and Clive from college. General pleasantries were exchanged until someone asked Clive what he did for a living....

There then followed the most surreal breakfast conversation with the two ushers, Theo and Hannah’s eyes getting rounder and rounder as the tales began to tumble out.

Clive is the mastermind behind Bill Shipton creater of SPLOSH. This is probably best described as “erotic slapstick”, a sexual genre which has become so well known over the years that it has many websites which are worldwide in their reach. It was even featured in an episode of Belle de Jour: Diary of a Call Girl starring Billie Piper and film maker John Waters is a fan.

The waitresses hurried in and out bringing fabulous fry-ups and more coffee as tales flew back and forth across the table in front of a rapt audience.

"The Americans call it WAM which stands for Wet and Messy. We, however, invented it all 20 or so years ago.”

"More coffee, Sir?"

"Thank you"

"Custard in the knickers is fine but jelly chafes"

"Who's for the full English with two poached eggs?"

"Over here"

"So the TV company said to me at this point is this where we'll get the punter to have sex with the cake? I told them in no uncertain terms; it’s not like that. We don't have intercourse with foodstuffs. It is erotic. It is funny. It is slapstick. It isn't hard core pornography!"

"Orange juice?"

"Our audience regularly vote the cake fight in the film The Great Race the best example of Sploshing.”

Nicola - who is a very big cheese in the advertising world - was rapt. She is also a businesswoman and was quizzing him about download statistics and prices. It was heartwarming to see both sides get on so well and a testament to our friends that they were so easy with one another.

After breakfast I had time to kill which actually meant taking my car back to Hastings to stick it in the garage and check on my family who had been there overnight.

Clive, Simon and Nisha then started on the arduous task of getting ready to dress the Town Hall and add various important bits (mainly lanterns candles and electric candles) to the Tudor Room where the reception was going to be held.

I was then left .....to wait.......

THAT'S MATRIMONEEE!

Just back from the Honeymoon and a fabulous time has been had with my new wife. When I say "new" I also mean "first". Never been in this position before. Somehow despite having been in relationships with some terrific women over the years never really felt that they were "the one". When the Dark Lady came along I was toast very quickly so just over a year ago whilst watching the skating at Bryant Park in New York I popped the question. Thankfully she said yes burst into tears and spilled coffee down her front.

The plans had been made the day was nearly upon us just a few last minute things to do before the very very big day. Was I nervous? No. Was I tense? No...ACTUALLY THAT IS A LIE YES VERY TENSE!!!!!!

Would we manage to get it all done and would it go smoothly?

On the Friday there was to be a lot of too-ing and fro-ing from London and Hastings with guests arriving from as far afield as Chicago to take part in the happy event.

DL had been organising with some help from me seating plans. Menu. Decorations with all the colours matching and a lengthy document explaining who had to be doing what where with whom at a particular time. A bit like "Cluedo" but with hopefully fewer murders.

The idea behind the list was to smooth the path of the day so that Bride and Groom could enjoy it without enormous worry that things wouldn't happen when they were supposed to. As one of my Best Men remarked upon receiving the sealed orders.

"This is excellent I don't have to worry too much about my part in proceedings as most of the information seems to be about the placing of the candles. Traditional and battery powered. We'd hired a lot of artificial candles as the Town Hall in Rye is a spectacular old building and if it burned down we'd never be able to show our faces in town again.

One Bride was so concerned about her big day and things going wrong that she forgot one vital thing: To enjoy it and had a horrible wedding as a result.

Little problems began to surface. My family was going to be crammed in to my house so beds had to be made up including a sofa bed that I had bought. My poor Auntie Daphne drew that particular short straw. I rushed around the house on the Thursday afternoon and the Friday tidying and making up beds. When I say making up beds that is when the first brain failure occurred. I can't put Duvet's on without crawling inside the cover. Purple faced and sweating I looked around for pillows. Erm I had the pillow cases and the sheets and the duvet covers and the beds but not nearly enough pillows so had to rush up to ASDA to buy some more. Just as the first members of my family arrived.

Another and rather more important problem had occurred as well. Being greedy and having so many lovely friends that in many cases go back to school and College days I was unable to choose a single Best Man. So I was lucky in that two friends agreed to do the job. Clive who I have known since about 1975 and Simon AKA "Libido Boy" who has been a wonderful friends since we were 14. He drives Clive doesn't so he agreed to hurry down from his home in Leicester in order to help me move stuff to and from the venue the ancient Mermaid Inn in Rye. East Sussex.

Everything had to be in place as a few of the guests were turning up for things on sticks and a few drinks about 7pm on the Friday.

The plan was Simon would help me deliver everything to the Mermaid. Drop my suitcase off at the hotel where I was staying that night. Park his car in the car park next to that of the Dark Lady. My car would be left at home so on the Sunday bright and early DL would drive me in her car to the airport for the Honeymoon. Leaving Simon, Clive and the DL's friend and helper Nisha to clear up.

As the Friday wore on I began to receive increasingly agitated phone calls from Simon. He was still more than 100 miles away and it was approaching 5pm. He had bought a new Sat Nav which had decided to show him the scenic route with the most congestion on the pretext of removing him from the motorways and main roads and its allied congestion.

I then had to leave my family at home whilst I made several journey's to and from Rye in my car containing lanterns and candles and jackets and suitcases and gifts for the Groomsmen. The Bridesmaid and others.

I was a husk by the time I arrived for the drinks at the Mermaid just as Simon arrived with a worried look on his face after a journey that had taken him nearly 7 hours.

By the time we had had a couple of pints and some chips in the Lounge that had been reserved for us. Everything seemed a lot rosier. Although the Dark Ladys' daughter Ella wasn't quite so keen when she discovered that the Mermaid has the reputation of being one of the most haunted buildings in the UK. Still this wasn't going to bother me as I was staying some place else. It would be a quiet untroubled night for me.

Or would it????