nostalgic interruption

Six years ago tonight, I was in here:

This here is the Old Albion pub in a particularly lovely little nook of Cornwall called Crantock.

Of course, we only went for a quick half, which inevitably turned into many. Although we weren’t to blame, what with all the nerves. We were fortunate enough to have around twenty five other special mortals with us to help with the nerve-soothing. Included in the rabble was my mother, who very much enjoyed her G&Ts that particular evening.

It wasn’t the evening that I’d imagined; I was expecting much flapping and faffing. What occured that evening was the beginning of three days of almost non-stop laughing – the three days I only have to slyly think about to bring about a wry smile.

It all started to kick off with Mum’s excesive Gin and Tonic consumption. My mother is one of the most loveliest and tiny people you could ever meet. Give her a few fizzy wibblers and she starts mis-speaking. It’s in the genes, you see. Her amusing sentence came as she and my Pops left the pub: “See you tomorrow, Steve”, to my husband-to-be-of-the-very-next-day, Jim. This sentence became food and drink to the rest of the wedding party.

The Three Steves are now part of legend. Well, of course, in the beginning there was Jim-Steve, a creation of my mother’s furtile gin-infused imagination.

Then there was Steve McGarrett of Hawaii 5-0 fame; a manifestation of a cruel Yorkshire Berkshire man’s twisted humour. Poor Mick was duped by chum Dale into thinking we were having a themed beach party after the proceedings and duly went out of his way to travel into Newquay and spend the princely sum of fifty squid on a Hawaiian shirt. When the perpetrator revealed his evil plot to Mick over breakfast on the morning of the event, Mick lost the power of speech and found himself unable to speak to Dale. The rest of us were crying into our full English watching them shunning each other like an old married couple,

Finally there was the Real Steve. A man actually called Steve, who was my sister’s now ex-partner. The one who Mama got a bit confused with the night before.

All of this was already firing up the day ahead in Bodmin, and was only the beginning of the most humour-laden, chilled-out wedding ever and of a much longer, and wonderful journey. Tomorrow, of course, will be my sixth wedding anniversary with the sparkling Speckled Jim.