That’s what we did in those days. We just didn’t care. And were stupid. My sister-in-law brings me home as I was unconscious, this generation didn’t invent binge-drinking, we did. My mother greets this with triumph. 'I won’t wake her', she tells my sister-in-law. She doesn’t want me to marry him. My sister-in-law disagrees vehemently with this plan. There is a stand-off. And says she’ll come round and wake me herself.
My other sister-in-law popped into my hen do after visiting bills stag do and pronounces his was better. He was last spotted swinging from the chandelier in the bar of the Bull’s Eye, our local in Basildon town centre. I feel a competitive edge come on me at this point. And order more rounds of drinks. And wonder if I should get on the table and strip but not sure my underwear would be up to the scrutiny.
Three hours earlier I was still sewing my wedding dress. 'Come on hurry up' my friends all jeered. I wore lilac velvet hot pants, pink suede high heeled boots and a frilly white blouse for the hen night. I remember this hazily several hours later, covered in vomit just before I passed out.
I get into a bath full of cold water and try to sober up. Miraculously it works. I get dressed and by some huge stroke of good fortune look half-way human. My friend’s husband picks me up in his Ford Anglia. He tells me I look beautiful and then roars with laughter at my ‘bouquet: a packet of 10 Guards and a box of Swan Vestas.
We pick Bill up who is very much worse than me. Amazed he has his jacket facing the right way. His eyes are blood red. I remind him about the ring. We got it made from a ‘contact’ in Hatton Garden. It cost £10. We couldn’t afford to get it engraved so would take it back afterwards to be finished. It was also too big.
Most of Bill’s family didn’t turn up. They are Catholics and don’t recognise a civil marriage. Had a lot of pressure to reconsider and get married in a church. Biggest pressure of all, ironically, came from my father-in-law, a fully paid-up member of the Communist Party. But I was a ‘modern’ girl and didn’t believe in the pantomime and hypocrisy of it all as I didn’t have any faith. No, I would do it all myself. Neither of the parents would be expected to pay out for something I considered a waste of money.
The service was short and impersonal. Though not without laughter. The ring fell off and clanked loudly on the floor three times during the ceremony. There were murmurings in the stalls.
In the wedding photos, the few I have, most of which didn’t come out as the photographer Chris Mitchell was also hungover and forgot to put film in the camera, Bill is holding what looks like a crumpled hankie. It was the marriage certificate.
Our friend Mick Goff took us all to the Swan in Brentwood for lunch and picked up the bill. Then we went back to my parents house and started making the food. Bill slouched on the sofa. Marion, who I worked with in display, made the wedding cake. Everybody bought both presents and booze. We bought several barrels of draught beer which I was informed afterwards was a great success.
My poor parents were quite overwhelmed by all this mayhem in their home. The only music was their Garrards radiogram. So I knocked at a neighbours house who I knew was a DJ and asked him if he could help us out. He agreed as long as he was invited to the party.
I turned the lights down to get some mood going and everyone dancing. Mum turned them back up again amid mutterings that she never wanted this anyway. This on off business carried on for some time, much to the amusement of some of our friends. So a bit of a tricky situation. Dad, by this time full of bonhomie and draught beer cranks it up a gear, with a spot of Dad dancing. My brother Alan turned up with his mates, consumed vast quantities of the beer and leered at all the girls then buggered off when the beer was gone.
Mick went on to become hugely successful buying the Hollywood restaurant in Benfleet and something of a playboy with a succession of gorgeous girls who were considerably younger. He never married. As Mick, our wedding lunch provider left, Mum - to my agonizing embarrassment - told him she’d wanted me to marry him instead. This was surreal. And thirty years on reminded of an acute observation Bill made a few years ago and which amuses him still. He says that if Mick had married me he would be living in the little house at the bottom of the hill and he would be living in the big pile at the top.
Our wedding night was spent in my parents bed, we didn’t have sex, too exhausted. Next day I helped clean up the house, Monday back at work.
Years on people still talk about it.
No comments:
Post a Comment