If you want to know the details of how we ended up here, you need to read The Wedding Part 1 which you can read here ——–>……… https://57millionthbestblogintheworld.com/2024/02/24/the-wedding-part-1-2/ ☺️ So far, the Moffat Toffee Road Train wedding convoy had seen SHIRT GATE, MOFFAT TOFFEE GATE and ROAD CLOSED GATE. Although now tight for time, we’d used up our ‘list of things that can go wrong when being invited to a wedding’. It was all going to go swimmingly from now on. Except…..I can’t swim…… ☺️ So, Stage 4, get to Dalkieth the long way round, find Dad a shirt, get the bridesmaids to the castle to get their hair and make up done, get ourselves and Dad dressed up, and, finally get ourselves in a taxi to the wedding. Easy 😳

Getting to the hotel, easy, ordering sandwiches and crisps for the starving bridesmaids, easy, finding a shirt for Dad in Dalkieth, easy. See, it was all coming together. The first indication ‘easy’ might be pushing it, came during the long wait for the starving bridesmaids sandwiches. I’m not sure whether the ‘chef’ was baking the bread, curing the ham or deep frying his especially home grown, hand picked deep fried crisps, but they were taking FOREVER! It wasn’t long before Graeme lost patience. ‘If I don’t take them to the castle in the next five minutes they’ll be late for their hair appointment!’ Suddenly we were rescued by the arrival of Shannon’s sandwiches. They didn’t look as if Chef had put his or her whole heart into them, but, they were sandwiches. 😏 Kirsty was not so lucky. I’d told her not to order Tibetan goats cheese, truffle and krill paste sandwiches. We waited, waited, waited and…….waited some more. Eventually, Graeme ‘the Stig’, decided to bundle the girls into the car and shot off at 100mph, in a haze of dust along Dalkieth High St. We decided to retire to our hotel rooms to get ready and wait for Graeme’s return……………. Peace was shattered when my sister knocked on the bedroom door. ‘you’ll need to come…it’s Dad’ ‘what’s wrong?’ ‘Just come with me’ Before I describe what we found, you should know Dad was not one for suits, shirts and ties. He’d retired from his job and spent his time listening to Elvis and watching films. As I entered the room, even I was taken aback. Poor Dad had got himself into such a tizzy, he’d got himself all stressed and now his brand new shirt was see through. He was absolutely soaked through. ‘He can’t go like that…’ Said my sister. ‘Ok, take the shirt off, dry it with a hairdryer, let him cool down and try again. C’mon Dad, you’ll be fine, just relax’ I nearly took the shirt and jumped on it. so far, it had been nothing but bloody trouble. We eventually got Dad sorted out, calmed down, got ourselves dressed, then assembled on the pavement to wait for Graeme………..😁 Time ticked, tocked, trickled, tardied,ticked, then tocked some more. We had to wait for him returning before we could order the taxi. ‘Try phoning him’ ‘he doesn’t have the phone, I’ve got it’ my sister said with a slightly more anxious voice than I’d heard for at least half an hour. ‘I don’t understand’ said Fran. ‘The castle is only 15 minutes away from here, where is he?’ Just as we were about to give up on the wedding, a car we all recognised roared up Dalkieth High Street. It screeched to a halt in front of us, Graeme appearing to emerge from the drivers side before the car had even stopped. ‘You can forget the bleeping wedding, we’ll never bleeping make it’ (followed by more bleeps and well, more bleeps’ ‘I don’t understand’ said Fran again. ‘Its only 15 minutes drive from here’ ‘Took me more than double that, we’re bleeped’ In the end, we decided to take both cars and try to make the castle/church before the bride hit the altar. We set off with Graeme in front. Everything was fine until Fran exclaimed….. ‘where’s he going?’ I said ‘how do you mean?’ ‘it’s this way’ she said pointing to the first exit on the roundabout. ‘He’s going the wrong way’ At this point, without even fingerprints nor DNA evidence, we knew we’d discovered why Graeme thought we’d never make the wedding. He had GONE THE WRONG WAY! Now, you’ve got to realise that, as a family, we were not just a bunch of stupid, geographically challenged numpties. I was in research, Fran in finance, Graeme a foreman, my sister, a senior charge nurse. So, we certainly on paper, were not stupid. But, this was all happening before the invention of sat navs, so it was maps and gut feeling. One phone call and Graeme was now following us. The Moffat Toffee Convoy was back on course. We reached the church within 10 minutes, breathing the biggest sigh of relief heard since Luke Skywalker popped a missile down a tiny hole in the Death Star at a million miles an hour. There was a coach and loads of beautifully dressed wedding goer types with a lovely church. We started to look for a parking space. The coach was in the way, so we had to wait for a few moments. Even Me, the wedding hater, was beginning to become comfortable with the fact it would ALL BE OVER SOON. ‘Do you recognise anyone…..?’ ‘Sorry?’ ‘Just seems funny’ said Fran ‘I don’t see anyone I recognise’ I looked around. She was right. No cousins, no Auntie Jan, no Uncle Gavin, no Mum, no nobody. The window was downed……

‘Excuse me, is this Borthwick castle church? We asked a rather posh well dressed woman. ‘No, the castle is up the road, beyond the cottage’ WE WERE AT THE WRONG BLOODY WEDDING, and, guess what……..THE BLOODY BUS WAS BLOCKING THE WAY! 😳 Eventually we persuaded the bus driver to MOVE! We were on our way again. Racing as if we were in the final stage of the Dakar rally to reach, what was now becoming, the Wedding on Elm Street Part Three. Would we make it in time? Were we heading towards the right Castle? What else could possibly go wrong? I consoled myself with the fact nothing else daft would happen…….but I was wrong….. 😀 ……..to be continued….. ‘The Wedding Part Deux’ was brought to you by David Linden aka @qosfc1919 and Dodo Productions © 2024