The Wedding from Hell
SATURDAY 6th JUNE – WOODGREEN
To further compound the feeling that I’m being out grown by my peers I was recently invited to attend the wedding of one of my friends from my Borneo expedition who is also younger than me. Who isn’t? Oh how these youngsters mock me. But I was determined to go. I’m a big boy now and should go to weddings and things. I didn’t buy that suit from Primark for nothing. Plus I’d get to see the Borneo posse.
All I had to do was wake up at 6am, iron a shirt and meet Dee at Hatton Cross by 8am for a lift.
Simple.
So you can imagine the feeling of fear that came over me as I lay in my room on Saturday morning wondering why my room was so light and wondering when would my alarm go off?
I hopped over to my phone.
It was 8:45am.
I had several missed calls.
Shitity shitity fuck fuck…
“Yes hi Dee its Max. I’ve kind of just woken up. Yep. Uh huh. I know I’m a moron. Cheers for that news flash…So I erm, suppose I’ll see you there?”
Dee was very calm about it. However Alex in the background wasn’t.
“I got up at 6:15 you dick!”
I’ve never got ready for anything so quickly in my entire freaking life. I literally collapsed into my wardrobe and rolled out again fully clothed. I was out of the house in approximately 3 minutes and tearing my way along to Wood Green station like a scruffy business man who has just woken with a stonking hangover to find Camila Parker Bowles next to him smoking a cigarette and licking her lips seductively.
Of course when I arrived to Wood Green station is was closed for the weekend. Trouble loves company doesn’t it?
Shitity shitity shit.
I am Hugh Grant in Four Weddings and a Funeral. I’m a fully functioning cliche. A moronic man child running around London in a crumpled and creased white shirt with flecks of week old mocha on it and smelling like someone with the plague has spat in my arm pits.
So I ran further to Turnpike Lane station. Sweating unhealthily.
By 9:30am I was at Euston station. Purchasing a ticket through the nose. Which is painful.
“I’d-like-a-single-to-Kidd
“We have a train leaving in 10 minutes,” she said calmly, ignoring the fact I was about to pass out on their counter.
“When-does-it-arrive?!?!”
“It arrives at 12:10.”
“Awesome!” I yelled before pulling my mental arithmetic face (very similar to another face of mine) and doing the necessary mental calculations, its 30 minute drive from Kidderminster to Borston village so …..
MY GOD I COULD ACTUALLY MAKE IT. BY THE SKIN OF MY TEETH. I AM NOT A MORON!
PRAISE THE LORD! I AM REDEEMED!
And then I was running for the train, which is hard in adult shoes, although I did spend a few moments agonising over playing in traffic rather than paying for the ticket. “Yes sorry I couldn’t make it, got hit by a car, terribly unfortunate, on the plus side I didn’t have to get a mortgage on a train ticket.”
Have you seen the price of train tickets recently? At first I presumed they’d misunderstood me and thought I’d actually made an audacious request to purchase a train made of gold that stretched from London to Kidderminster and was manned by nubile Swedish cheerleaders serving caviar and champagne from their collective growlers. For the price of a first class return you can fly to Thailand and back.
The next time the train drivers go on strike I’m going to personally punch them into paralysis.
Anyway despite this I was quite bizarrely happy with myself, so much so that I was high fiving strangers on the train and hugging scared geriatrics in my carriage.
“I am indestructible!”
TEXT TO JUDY: Don’t worry I’ll be there in plenty of time. See you at the service 
So things were going well. We got to Birmingham International in good time and I managed to run to my connecting train across town without actually brushing against any of the sunken eyed locals. I even had time to stop at ‘Herberts Coffee shack’ for an ice mocha which, unfortunately for yours truly, tasted like cold rats piss.
However it was fairtrade. So swings and roundabouts.
At 11:10 I got my connecting train to Kidderminster. It smelt of old people. However the old people were sitting well away from me so Christ knows how I smelt.
At 11:15 the train abruptly stopped.
At 11:16 there was an announcement:-
“Due to signal faults this train will cancelled at the next station. Any passengers wishing to travel to Kidderminster should get the replacement coach service.”
11:45 I’m on a replacement coach service to Kidderminster resigned to the shittest day on record. The only way this could get worse is if the coach load of geriatrics gang rape me for the duration of the journey and upload the resulting footage to youtube.
11:50 Text Judy and tell her that whilst her offer of a lift from Kidderminster at mid-day is generous I won’t be there. Unless this is a magic flying coach which can fly and has jet boosters. (It isn’t.)
1pm Arrive at Kidderminster station exactly as the ceremony starts 20 miles away. I hail a taxi. And when I mean hail I mean ‘throw myself in front of the nearest taxi and hammer onthe windows hysterically.’
This is a conversation you never want with a taxi driver:-
“Can you get me to Borston Church? I’m really late for a wedding.”
“It depends.” He started, rubbing his hands together and laughing manically. “How much money do you have?”
1:30pm Arrive at the Church. Ask driver for an-idiot-late -for-wedding-discount which is denied.
However he offers me a consolation mint which partially counters my morning breath so I can’t totally complain.
1:36pm Finally get in the perfectly symetrical rural church after running round it twice and peering in through stain glassed windows to establish which of the two doors are the altar and the entrance. Because that’d really round the day off nicely.
Suprisingly pick the right door.
1:37pm Stand at the back and watch the signing of the registrar. Pretend I’ve been there for ages and lament the fact that I forgot my glasses and my deoderant.
I think I deserve kudos for perservering if nothing else.
Standing room at the back.
