A nice day...

...so if I never hear that song again it won't be a moment too soon.

And lets be honest, the years have not been kind to any of us really have they ?

There's something about staying sober at a wedding, an air of superiority some might say, and air of normality I would say, sober is the normal state for most people most of the time, happily drunk is a state that most people aspire to when they attend functions such as weddings, drunk enough not to be able to see yourself to bed is the plateau that some manage to reach, drunk enough to need assistance off the dancefloor back to your seat because you are causing a nuisance is a height that only a few can achieve.

So which of the cast of ITV's daytime womens chatter programme do you think reached that ultimate of heights where assistance off the dancefloor by another cast member (who was only just one more drink behind her) was required, followed shortly afterwards by her exit from the proceedings completely, even though it was not yet midnight ?

My lips are sealed.
Loose chatter is not my bag.
Unlike the one who's profession is loose chatter
I can't even be bribed by drink.

It was a beautiful day, a perfect wedding in a castle, tears and musical performances, sugary, gushing, overblown show-business declarations of love for everyone followed by an evening of live musicians where everyone seemed to want to get up on stage and strut their stuff, including the legendary Drifters who sang an hours worth of their hits whilst only repeating one or two and even though the lighting was quite dark, I was sober and was not convinced that if you added the ages of "The Drifters" together they still wouldn't be old enough to have been alive in the 1960's, still, thats a minor point.

Singing waiters, we had operatic singing waiters at the reception, one of them (fortuitously a woman) came and serenaded me to hysterical laughter from Ned and my two daughters seated safely across the table, I suspect however that they weren't actual waiting staff, as one of the Nolan Brothers (yes there are brothers) mentioned in his hilarious speech, "they can bloody sing well but they're shit waiters" together with the classic comment on the holy state of matrimony "I've been divorced four times, I'm starting to think its my fault..."

We had two musical interludes from the Nolan Sisiters, one in the church which was very beautiful and inevitably at the reception, late on, a drunken rendition of the above refrain, a contractual obligation with IPC Magazines, the murmur in the room late on being that the coverage would be held until the christmas edition of Woman magazine, so there you have it, JerryChicken, star of blog and Woman magazine, I'll be the one in the bottom left hand corener of the last page with "we don't know who this miserable twat was but he was still sober at 1am" as my epitaph.

And I know nothing of these things but the DJ who played a couple of hours of old soul music seemed to be some sort of celeb too - see how crap I am at this gossip column stuff, how I could never be a Hedda Hopper or a Loose Woman, why I never buy or read the multitude of magazines that cater for the massive gossip market, for I just sit there and let the day waft over me not giving a flying one for the name or reputation of the person stood next to me.

Don't drink, don't smoke, don't dance is a lifelong motto - miserable bastard is a phrase that springs to mind - sensible miserable bastard is the one that I prefer and at the bar prices last night the water is all that I could afford, I daren't look in my wallet this morning, I know what was in there this time yesterday morning, I fear that it is empty today.

A few last minute observations,

Jackie Brambles is much smaller than you'd imagine and her husband wears a skirt*.
Carol McGiffin is much taller than you'd imagine, over six foot in heels.
Andrea McLean is as gorgeous as you'd ever dreamed and her husband is built like a brick shithouse, a big brick shithouse, but for all that is a nice chap, a gent.
Sherry Hewson looks exactly like Carmel, yes I know you don't know who Carmel is, but she does.
Everyone looks "well sought into" in the flesh and thats how it should be.



*For he is Scottish