My daughter and her affianced (you don?t get too many chances to write that phrase, so I?m snatching mine) announced their engagement in early June on an unexpectedly sunny and twinkly day. I said cheerfully that December 8 was an age away. She said ?Ya think?? and he said, ?Most people are saying, 'Don?t you need a year???
Ooh, no, I didn?t think so. Not for a little country wedding in Hampshire, the sort of nuptials Jane Austen's papa could have presided over at Steventon. We?ll be walking 250 yards to the church where the bride was christened, then 250 yards back to the house where she was born (in the dining-room, during an ambulance strike: that was a hell of a morning). Then we?ll walk up to the village hall where she went to playschool for the reception (100 yards).
I see now that even though the distances are so short, they would have worried Miss Austen as much as they worry me. In June a bride could skip to our church in white satin heels. In December, when no late-18th-century young woman could put foot to the ground out of doors, I have a growing feeling that the ushers may have to cross arms and carry her on a human sedan chair.
I?ve been worrying about how cold the London girls will be in church in their en f?te wedding clothes (bare legs, sleeveless). Also, whether I need to issue them with torches. At 4pm it was a darkling sky when I took the dogs out on Thursday, but in December it?ll be blacker earlier.
I walked back deliberately via the village hall so as to a) cast my vote for a police commissioner and b) to see how cold it is in there. Just as I was tying them up, a big, dark-coloured estate car drew level with us and reversed into the little track beside the war memorial. I thought it was turning, but it switched its lights off and stayed put. Down an unmade track.
To my thrilled delight, I discovered the hall was stifling. (NB: the girls may need fans as well as torches.) Two desperately bored but very warm people said they?d been there since 6am for 30 voters so far. I took ballot paper to booth and ? for the first time since I was 21 ? stood puzzling over what to do with it.
Who were these people? Whose mad idea was this? Why should I give any one of them a swanning-around job with a compensation package I have to pay? The only one I?d heard of was Michael Mates. I stood there for five minutes getting crosser and crosser. Michael Mates! Honestly, really ? he must be 80. (Wrong: he won?t be 80 until 2014. And what a splendid time he?ll have swanning around during the 100-year Remembrance Day ceremonies.) I spoilt my paper with a short essay on the senseless waste of money, poked it into the slot and felt triumphantly self-satisfied and ridiculous by turns as I left.
As I untied the dogs, I was expecting pitch-black darkness but found the welkin bright with blue flashing police-lights and car headlamps moving at walking pace past the turning to the hall. In the sky above were two low-flying helicopters making a massive din. The cars were crawling behind a police dog-handler (on foot) with a massive German shepherd dog, who suddenly spotted my two. The handler yelled: ?Are you holding those dogs?? Yes. ?Well, keep holding them.? Right. ?Have you come from that way?? he said, pointing south to the pub. No, I said, pointing north to the church. Are you looking for something, officer? He said he was just doing his job, madam. I opened my mouth to tell him about the car down the track, but he marched past in a glow of professionalism.
?Why didn?t you tell him about the car down the track?? my husband said when he came home. Because I didn?t think he?d take me seriously. He said: ?Probably wouldn?t have. Maybe that?s why you should have voted for a police commissioner.?
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