Wedding

Most of you have never seen it before, and you will almost certainly never see it again. It was not by choice at all, and I argued long and hard to prevent it, but In the end I had to give in. And I have been told that I have to show it here. So, to much incredulity and no doubt laughter, here is a picture of me wearing real trousers. And a shirt. And, stunningly, a tie. No shoes though. That would have been pushing it just a bit, especially as I had had to buy all the rest of the stuff.

The occasion was the happy wedding of Brendon and Michaela, neither of whom, naturally, I had ever met beforehand. I'm not always a big fan of weddings, partly because people seem to expect that you dress up, and partly because many of the ones I have been to have degenerated into fights, arrests or family feuds of one sort or another. And thus to go to a wedding in a foreign country having never met the bride or groom before just seemed wrong. But Michaela is one of Maaret's best friends (the wedding was the reason she had come back to Africa), I had been included on the invitation, and as I had to drive her there anyway, I figured I may as well make an effort to go.

Brendon is a kiwi and Michaela grew up in South Africa, though they have been living in London for years. The most striking thing to me was that there were actually more Kiwi's at the wedding than locals/South Africans, and also despite the fact that they are London based, Maaret was the only guest who had made the effort to come from Europe, which was a bit surprising to me.

Lots of Kiwis away from home pretty much means that booze supplies will be well taken care of, and indeed they were. The food was pretty good, the bride and her bridesmaids all stunning, and the whole event – excepting some very strange parts of the loooong sermon by the priest conducting the wedding, and his instance on producing Michaela's name wrong throughout the ceremony – was thoroughly enjoyable. Yes, I looked like i'd been done up like a kipper, and felt like a muppet, but that is neither here nor there. The weather – stunningly for us – held out brilliantly and everybody was happy, full, and drunk. If all weddings were like this, i'd be quite happy.