Getting Married

Apparently two of the most stressful things you can do in life are to get married and to move house. I did both in the space of a year, and I've addressed moving house here (because the joy should be spread around equally).

I can vouch that the organisation side of a wedding is not the most pleasurable experience. And by “not pleasurable” I mean “I’d rather perform surgery on myself with a rusty spoon and a junior hacksaw”. Of course the whole process would be less intrusive if you didn’t need to lube yourself up with a family sized tub of Vaseline and bend over ready for penetration before embarking on the adventure.

What do I mean exactly? Well, buying anything for a wedding is amusing, in a masochistic "are-you-sodding-joking?" type way. Conversations go along these lines:

Me: "Hello. I'd like to arrange some invitations to a party, for probably around a hundred people."
Shop assistant: "No problem, prices are £45."
Me: "Excellent. On the website they look they'll match the wedding colours."
Shop assistant: "Oh, it's for a WEDDING? Sorry, WEDDING invitations are £500."

And so on.

I was quoted £1,650 for four hours use of a Rolls Royce. That’s over £400 an hour. I dropped the phone in shock so I’m unsure whether they were providing Lewis Hamilton to drive us to church too. Luckily I managed to find someone who had a Bentley which wasn’t made of solid gold, otherwise it might have been a Ford Fiesta (and I imagine that a flowing wedding dress creates a few problems getting in one of those).

Nothing for a wedding costs less than £500. It’s a well known fact, and the list of things you need is endless. You apparently need to buy things that I’ve never heard of (and I’m pretty sure I still didn’t see on the day itself either). Then, of course, you must feed people that you’ve never met before and relatives who you don’t like. And I don’t mean pop down to the chippie and grab fifty large portions of chips and some mushy peas either; they expect decent food. I’m pretty sure the hotel where we held the reception wouldn’t have allowed a ‘bring your own’ takeaway food option either. They’d have missed out on the eleventy billion pounds per head it cost. It’s more than I’d spend on a meal for myself, let alone a bunch of freeloaders who all thought it was funny to give us the same cheap toaster from Argos as wedding gifts.

I made the mistake of getting involved and trying to appear committed during the build up, the worst example being me accompanying my soon-to-be wife to a florists to talk about ideas for the big day. After ten minutes if it had been possible to commit suicide with a daffodil I’d have taken the option. It probably didn’t help that I was hungover but I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. I’m unsure when, or where, they both suddenly learned Arabic, but it sounded like the preferred communication protocol. The two of them talked through ideas (I think) for what seemed like a week and I didn’t have a clue whether the words they were using were flowers or placements or procedures or arrangements... Anyway, it’s irrelevant what the words meant, I understand numbers and they added up to more than £500.

The vicar only had the cheek to come round and meet us when Liverpool were playing Chelsea in the Champions’ League. It might have seemed rude to her, for me not to turn down the TV, but I think I pulled it off by looking over her shoulder and just randomly grunting in agreement every now and again. Actually I didn’t pull it off at all because she mentioned it in the service, which was actually kind of a blessing because it momentarily distracted me from the screaming kid I was fantasising about stringing up next to Jesus on the cross.

But of course, as everyone says, the day flies by. Regardless of how much free alcohol is pushed in your direction, it’s impossible to get drunk because you’re pulled from pillar to post until the point where everyone else is drunk and you’re expected to dance romantically. Really? What are these people doing at my wedding if they don’t know me better than that?

Before you know it, it’s all over and you’re simply left with a scrap of paper to confirm your partnership, a bill for your soul and a wife suggesting that maybe a baby should be next on the list.

The Nope Badger

Not much of a rant, or even a post, but I can't resist posting this simply because my childish mind finds it hilarious.

London Airports

I’ve entitled this ‘London Airports’, but that’s really going against my point (stick with me, there is one). Most airports near London have included the capital city in their name when, in reality, it’s a tenuous claim at best. Take London Luton Airport, for example. Well, to anyone from the UK that just doesn’t make any sense. Luton is a town in its own right and it’s a town which is not in London. Sure, if you look on an Atlas then they’re only about a centimetre apart but by that logic Bangkok’s only just down the road too.

People from outside the area consider London to be the chunk of land inside the M25 ring road (even though its not, it’s further in – Watford’s inside the M25 and that’s not London either). Luton airport is fifteen miles outside the M25 and, really, twenty miles from the outskirts of London. You’d be pissed off if you arrived in the centre of London, thirty five miles from Luton airport, expecting to find it around the corner.

Luton’s not the only culprit though. Gatwick is as bad, especially when its website proclaims it to be “Your London airport”. Cheeky bastards, my geography’s not that bad. If it were my airport I’d have put it in the right place, or at least given it a name that made sense. You know, something like “The 20 Mile South of London, Gatwick Airport”. I’m not sure it’s a very catchy name but at least it won’t confuse the foreigners who step off the plane expecting to be able to see Big Ben only to learn they’ve got a ninety minute bus ride before that’s possible. They must end up thinking that London’s the same size as Scotland.

Thankfully they’re not all at it (well, not as blatantly anyway). Stanstead Airport is only slightly further out than Luton and it doesn’t feel the need to plonk the word ‘London’ in front of its name all the time. It does seem like it's optional for them so maybe they just can’t decide. This is curious because it claims to be the third busiest airport in the country so surely it’d benefit from the prestige of having London in its name. After all, Stanstead’s only a small place – a lot smaller than Luton and no-one would know where it is if it wasn’t for the airport.

Even the small Oxford airport claims to be London Oxford Airport which is really taking the piss. It’s fifty miles from London for god’s sake! I hope the people who name these airports are not pilots, otherwise you’re likely to get on a flight to Paris and end up in New York.

You wouldn’t have Liverpool Manchester Airport would you, so why London Luton or London Gatwick? After all Liverpool and Manchester are close to one another. The reason, I believe, is simple: status. It’s almost a subconscious thing. If you live in the south and you’re looking to book a flight then you kind of expect these facilities to be centred around the capital. You might expect to have to travel to London, but not bloody Luton (who wants to go there?) or Crawley (where Gatwick really is). Stick ‘London’ in front of the airport name and all of a sudden it’s what you expected in the first place. It works even more for foreigners (or people from Wales on their first trip over the Severn Bridge). It’s still a bloody con though because they’re not in London, or even very close.