Weddings……yes….there….I said it…..weddings. Things of great love and beauty for those involved or, sometimes, as a guest in particular, a free ticket to the worst day out you can have whilst you’re breathing on this good Earth. ……and so it passed, an envelope with a 50-50 chance dropped through the letterbox……..and thus began the lead up to what turned out to be a very ‘special’ day indeed. I opened the letter……my lovely cousin was getting married in a castle in Scotland. Since it was only 60 miles up the road and the thought of spending a couple of nights in a castle seemed very romantic. So, I shrugged my shoulders, we bought the obligatory acceptance card and that was it. We’d buy a gift, buy some new gigs, turn up, watch a lovely ceremony, smile, take some pictures, eat some nice food, smile again, dance, laugh, smile even more, and spend the night in a looxshoory bed in a Scottish Castle. Beat that u Beckhams…. 😊 Of course, that’s where the whole thing started to unravel. You see, the castle only had enough sleeping accommodation for around 20 peeps, and, guess what, the grooms side came from New Zealand. We were hardly going to argue about sleeping arrangements when this lot were coming half way round the globe to be there. It was also quite hard to kick the bride and groom out…. 😉 So, my other half, sister, her husband, my daughter from my first marriage and her cousins booked into a small hotel in a nearby village. Ok, the romance of us staying in a castle was dead, but hey, we had so many other things to enjoy, who cared. My mother and her sister, the brides mother, had gone ahead of the wedding, staying in Edinburgh. We’d pick up my Dad and drive to the hotel, the girls, who were to be bridesmaids , would be given a lift to the castle to get their hair and make done. Easy…… We set off in a convoy of two, with my sister, dad and brother in law, Graeme, in one car and us up front. We’d reached the notorious St Anne’s bridge, a single lane thing that many an artic lorry had failed to complete over the years. We stopped at the lights. So far so good. Then, suddenly, there was a loud knock on the car window. It was my brother-in-law…… ‘ yer Dad’s left his shirt for the wedding back at the house…..! ‘ It took a few seconds for it to sink in. ‘B-b-b….but, that’s all he had to remember, his suit, shoes and his shirt. sheesh, how could he forget it?’ The lights turned to green. ‘Ok, we haven’t time to go back, let’s go to Moffat and see if we can quickly find him a shirt there’ Soon, we’d parked up in Moffat High St. Moffat is a lovely village. Surrounded by the Moffat hills, it has a lovely waterfall called the devils Beeftub, some nice eateries, it’s own sweets named after the village and the narrowest hotel in Scotland. My sister, Dad and the girls headed off to find a shirt, while we parked up. As time wore on Fran and I started looking at each other. Where was everyone? We got out the car, and like Sunday evening detectives, headed off down the Main Street. The first person we found was my niece, Shannon. ‘Hiya, did we manage to get Papa a shirt then?’ ‘I don’t know but I got some Moffat toffees. Do you want one?’ She is the loveliest girl and she was only 12, but that wasn’t the answer I needed and time was not something we had in great abundance. We eventually found the rest of the gang and a pecking, slightly out of breath Dad minus shirt but with more Moffat Toffees! We set off back to the car….. ‘Where’s Graeme?’ I asked. ‘ I don’t know, he was parked over there….’ The car had disappeared. We looked round the square, finally spotting him at the petrol station. Why was he getting petrol now and not yesterday! 😊 We were losing time. We set off again but things were already getting slightly fraught. We’d researched how to get there as there were several small roads, nooks and crannie methods by which we could get to the hotel. One particular route would clip twenty minutes off the journey time, so, that’s the route we would take. We were now confident, that a shirt would find Dad, the hotel would arrive on time, the girls hair and make up would be the bestest ever and the rest of the journey would be el transfantastico……… Our little Moffat toffee eating convoy continued on it’s ‘merry’ way towards champagne, caviar and church bells. There was even some music being played on the CD player. Humming and some ‘Dah de Dah de Dah was going on too. We skipped round a pan drop roundabout and were just heading down a hill when Fran said ‘I think we just missed the turning’ I said intelligently ‘WHAT?’ ‘I think we should have taken a right at the roundabout back there. If we go this way it’s 30 minutes longer and the girls will be too late for their hair appointment’ I picked up my mobile and phoned my sister and co in the car behind. Within a minute we’d turned ourselves around and were once again heading in the right direction. Although the plan was slightly more complicated with the ‘FIND A SHIRT FOR DAD’ campaign getting the most votes for this years most proverbial pain in the rear competition, everything else was fine until this happened……..

Yes. For the one and only time in my whole life, before, since and thereafter, we turned a bend to find a megamental ‘ROAD CLOSED’ sign right across the road. A giant red and white piece of wedding planning plastic disaster. we stared at the sign for what seemed like hours. None of us could believe it. We even got out the car to look at it. I mean, as if that was going to make any difference. I turned to Fran……. ‘Don’t look at me. There was no mention of this anywhere. Oh and by the way that’s us about stuffed if we don’t turn round and get moving’ This was already turning into a small farce, but guess what……..it was to get worse……..😳