Is It Just Me? (31 page)

ii.
When the bride and groom kiss at the altar shout, ‘That’s not who I saw him kissing this morning!’

iii.
Smash your face down into the wedding cake, ‘. . . because it looks yummy.’ And be thought adorable for doing so.

iv.
Shout ‘Boring’ at the father of the bride’s speech, then ‘Watch me!’ and simply spin on your bum in the centre of the reception venue.

v.
Look up strange men’s kilts to see if they are wearing pants.

No, MDRC. Bridesmaiding definitely ain’t what it used to be. Although I occasionally still do point v. (Why is there always one person at every wedding in a kilt?) And back to the master list . . .

I couldn’t for the life of me tell you why, but the second the DJ starts up I seem to be a magnet for the obligatory-uncle-with-a-drinking-problem. His aim will be to Highland Fling me across the dance floor to ‘Agadoo’. Death to uncles.

Definitely not something you’d have to contend with outside a wedding environment (unless you’re part of a travelling circus and have taken to calling the Big Top a marquee). Here follows an example of the horrors that can come from ignoring Marquee Etiquette: I was once standing around at a wedding reception (warm glass of wine, ham sandwich, casing the joint for drunken uncles) when I noticed it was getting rather chilly in there. ‘Might be nice if someone closed the tent-flaps to trap the heat inside,’ I thought. So I called out – over the music, which was pretty loud – to someone at the other end of the marquee: ‘CLOSE THE FLAPS!’ They couldn’t quite hear me, so again I shouted, ‘COULD YOU CLOSE THE –’ at which point the music stopped and all you could see and hear was me in the middle of the marquee shouting furiously: ‘
FLAPS
’. The Drunken Uncle was immediately enamoured and introduced me for the rest of the night as ‘The Flaps Lady’.

If you are unlucky, sorry, I mean, privileged, to know the bride well enough to stay at her parents’ house the night before the nuptials, The Mother that we know and love from Christmas will very much rear her military head. There will be precision timings like you have never known: various sittings for breakfast (depending on your hierarchy in the wedding party); exactly when people are picking up flowers; dropping cakes off; delivering the young bridesmaids; when the father gets ready; when the make-up lady arrives; allotted times for the wedding video moments. Heaven forbid a video goes on or a photo goes off when we weren’t expecting it. If it’s not on the rota, IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN.

If something does go wrong, here is what to expect in all pre-nuptial houses, moments before the family must present their serene happy faces as they walk down the aisle:

All right, so that might be the tiniest of exaggerations to most wedding parties (outside Essex). But seriously, what happens to brides? What happens to brides? I mean, what
happens
to them? What HAPPENS? Look, I’m spinning. I have gone into a confused spin. FLAPS! Frankly, death to brides.

Like the impromptu wedding speech of the drunkenest uncle at the drunkenest wedding in the drunkenest corner of Northumberland, I could go on and on and on. I could talk about the bride’s ‘going away’ outfit, I could talk about the horrors of being put at the kids’ table aged thirty-seven because you’re the only single person there, or I could talk about the nightmare of being made to relive the whole thing a month later at the wedding video screening – a completely pointless exercise because I WAS THERE.

^*
Little M rushes in, fresh from her first-ever date
^*
Urh, urh, urh, he did lunge! He did! Urh! Snogging is revolting, and ends up with someone else nicking your sweets. Forget relationships. I am NEVER getting married.

That’s a relief, because you’ve just missed a big ranty list about the horrors of wedding days. Don’t worry, Little M. Marriage isn’t the be-all and end-all. You can get on with living your life.

I want to do something with my life. For me. On my own.

Good for you. But never say never. I feel the time might come very soon when we can accept the badge, when we’ll be ready. But if I get married, know this: I’m going to do things differently. There’ll be none of this fancy-hen-night-big-formal-wedding malarkey at the Hart nuptials. I’ve got it all planned. I’m going to be the coolest, most laid-back, chilled-out bride ever. I’m going to have a registry office ceremony with four people as witnesses, and then a Hawaiian BBQ by a swimming pool where everyone can wear whatever they want.

What happens to brides? Seriously, what happens to them? I mean, what
happens
?

N
ow, MDRC, do you have a coffee table? Perhaps you’re sitting in front of it right now? Perhaps your feet are artfully arranged on said table, resting on . . . what? The complete works of Shakespeare? A Wagner CD? A pile of Jonathan Franzens? The entire Booker Prize longlist? A delightfully squishy and yielding stack of
Economist
s and
New Statesman
s? (The magazines, obviously, not the professionals – however, if you’re resting your feet on a stack of clever young men then I’ll simply say well done and good for you.)

My coffee table tends to support nothing more than a hot beverage (and four old mugs from previous hot beverages), a
Radio Times,
an old
Take That
album, the
Complete Morecambe and Wise
box set, a packet of digestives and a copy of
Heat
magazine. You see –

Oh no – are we a cultural vacuum sitting around laughing at jokes on novelty mugs? Please say we get a bit clever? Do you have a library or something in another room?

I’ll say this to you, my younger self, why
wouldn’t
I be a cultural vacuum? You are. All you did yesterday was watch
Crocodile Dundee
and
Dallas
, and eat strange-looking sweets called UFOs (remember them, MDRC?).

I think you’ll find I’m currently listening to Thomas Hardy’s
The Mayor of Casterbridge
on my Walkman.

Yeah, but you’re not actually reading it, are you? You’re listening to it. You’re passive.

I need to show off my Walkman! Walking around listening to something is cooler than sitting down and reading books like an old dweeb.

And is it really
The Mayor of Casterbridge
you’re listening to?

Yes.

Really? What’s happening in it? Right now?

Um . . . they’re all having a big – uh – barn dance to celebrate the mayor becoming mayor. The whole of Casterbridge . . . it’s hilaire, it’s – oh, look, fine. I was listening to it but I got bored. I’m listening to the
Top Gun
soundtrack. Bella let me borrow her Ray Bans for an hour, so I had to listen to it coz Tom Cruise wore Ray Bans in
Top Gun
all the time. I’m pretending to be Kelly M
c
Gillis in the bit where he comes up to her in the bar and starts singing ‘You’ve Lost that Lovin’ Feelin’’. Maybe Goran Ivanisevic will do that to me one day . . .

That would indeed be smashing (Pun!)

Look, Little M, the
Top Gun
fantasies only go to show that you are a dreamer, not a studier. You’re deftly ignoring the pile of politics textbooks that you really need to read for your exams, and instead of learning about the Cold War, you’re lying on a bench in Ray Bans pretending you’re Kelly McGillis. I think this categorically proves that you are in no way a scholar.

I could be. If I actually did stuff.

Possibly. But first, let’s look at the facts. I’ll remind you of the maths teacher asking you to define ‘Pi’ and you saying, ‘It’s different depending on which filling it is,’ while in Politics you thought that the Cold War was in Iceland. If you’re in no way learned or cultured now, then –

Excuse me? ‘Not cultured’? I went to the British Museum last term to see the, um, Egyptians.

You see, you don’t know what you saw: you spent the whole time deciding what to spend your £5 on in the gift shop. (Three bookmarks and a thimble, if I remember.)

Yeah, well, I have a print of Munch’s
The Scream
on my wall, I’ll have you know.

It’s only because all the History of Art girls were talking about how they ‘expressed themselves’ through their pin boards. You got intimidated and ripped down your Wham posters so they’d think you were cool. It was nothing to do with cultural curiosity; it was peer pressure, pure and simple.

I still like that
Scream
, though.

I don’t believe you.

OK, I find it really scary. It gives me bad dreams. Don’t tell anyone.

I won’t. And you see, Little M, all I am saying is – the girl becomes the woman. You’re not culturally engaged now, and you won’t be later.

I always thought I’d have some kind of amazing brain-explosion in my twenties and start going to the opera and buying modern art.

Nope. Unless by ‘opera’ you mean the
Smash Hits
Poll Winners Party, and by ‘modern art’ you mean McDonald’s Happy Meals with drawings on the box. No, sorry, later in life you sink into the cheery cultural mire of Take That –

What are Take That?

Oh, just you wait. JUST. YOU. WAIT. They’re a boy band –

Like Bros?

Like Bros. But brilliant. And there are five of them. Then four of them. Then five of them again. And they split up, but don’t worry – they get back together and are weirdly even better. Basically, what I’m saying is –

You’re an idiot. A moron. A tea-drinking, trash-reading, bucket of intellectual jelly.

RUDE!

I can easily turn myself into a bright, enlightened young woman. That’s what I want to be. That’s what I’m going to be. Oh, yes. I’m going off to read – to read – um –

You can’t think of a single clever author, can you?

Uh . . . Freud. I’m going to read some Freud.

You only know who Freud is because he writes about men’s rude parts.

^*
giggles
^*
See ya, working very hard to make sure I never be ya!

That doesn’t even make sense.

MDRC, now that Little Miranda’s scampered off to try and find the dirty bits in the complete works of Freud and Kierkegaard, I can be completely open with you. Culturally, politically, ‘brainiac-ally’, I am something akin to a buffoon. At school, I was one of the funsters – fairly popular, very sporty – and it wasn’t the done thing to be a brain box of any kind. Being a swot or a nerd or a geek was, well, swotty and nerdy and geeky, so I didn’t bother. Then, at university, being fun and having fun were still far, far more important. I bought into this vibe wholeheartedly. I made sure I was always the first person to suggest hiring a bouncy castle or trying to invent a cocktail with cornflakes or hold a ‘Make a David Hasselhoff out of Chocolate Buttons’ competition (feel free to try that at home).