Significantly, since my last blog, I had the honour of being a best man for Simon and Caroline Last Friday at Ripley Castle. A stunning venue, shown to it’s full beauty by the crystal clear weather we had. The day started out with a very symbolic sight – Eirene spotted a butterfly just emerging from it’s cocoon.
Getting to the castle, the nerves went from factor 5 to factor 7. (I was fairly nervous about doing the best mans speech) I needn’t have been. After a heartfelt, beautiful ceremony we ate (and ate and ate) with each course punctuated by a speaker. I had some tough acts to follow. I realised that once I actually stood up there behind the lectern, slide clicker in hand (I’d made a powerpoint presentation called “the seven ages of Simon” with loads of blagged photos and school reports etc) that I actually knew it all pretty much off by heart as I’d gone through it so many times – I was on auto pilot. I could sit back (or stand back) and enjoy! Which is what I did. It went down really well. After that I tried to catch up to everyone’s level of drunk (I’d stayed sober till after my speech) and enjoyed the band and the company – the whole day was perfect – down to the wedding cake which was made of blocks of cheese and featured Pricess Leia and Han Solo as the figurines!
Saturday – grade 10 hangover. Luckily, it was super sports Saturday. Went to watch England slaughter India in the final of the ODI cricket series. We won by 7 wickets – a match that was watched by an estimated 60+ million viewers. After that we watched the footy (England 4 – 0 Israel) whilst we ate a lovely bit of bbq nosh round a friends house.
Sunday it was the birthday bash of an old friends daughter. It was at the Knaresborough Riviera – the beach bit of the Nidd near Conyngham Hall. A good mix of people turned up. All our lot (the kids anyway) had wet suits on which was quite good for quick glance identification purposes. Everyone seemed to have a lovely time. Since then we’ve been chilling, had some friends over for dinner last night and to watch a film that I hired – perhaps the worst film I’ve seen in ages (Oh Marbella) which was a bit of a shame. Terrible script – it felt that by the time the story had got going it was the closing credits.
Anyway – lunch hour nearly gone, I’m off to do some stuff.
