The Seven Year Itch

Cake cake cake cake caaaaaaaaaake!

No, not a craving, a memory of seven years ago this morning - which for those who are just catching up, was my wedding day. First job of the day for my Best Man brother and me was to schlepp from Gloucester Road in Kensington to Lambeth on a tube, pick up the wedding cake, carry it back down into the tube network, schlepp it to Richmond, be refused passage by a cabbie, walk it up to the hotel where the wedding would take place several hours later, set it up and then head back to Kensington for finery and the like. I've had many tense moments in my life, but, given my track record of falling over, twisting ankles, being a clumsy schmuck and the like - a record which extends faaaaar back beyond the remit of this experiment, incidentally - I'm not sure many of those moments come close to me and him carrying the most important cake of my life through the barriers at Lambeth North tube station, way before either of us was really awake enough to be entrusted with such a fragile wonder.

It was raspberry and raw gorgeousness, the closest we could get, given our limited time and budget, to something d would recognise as an American cake. None of your rock-hard fruit cake entombed in Royal Icing for us, oh dear me no. It was soft and yielding and scrumptious and fruity and melt-in-the-mouthy and damn, I said this wasn't a craving!

As it happened, we didn't end up having a lot of that cake. Most of it went back with a pal of mine called Natacha to the place where I'd stopped working just a week or so before the wedding. Wasn't until yeeeears after the wedding that d and I were watching Steel Magnolias (me for the first time), and the whole American tradition of a Groom's Cake  was explained to me.

Rassen-frassen-shoulda-had-my-own-damn-cake...

I'm kidding, of course. Once the day got going, the last thing I was thinking of was cake. There were things like cravats to bother about, and honeymoons, and crap, what was that!

My family broke at least one of the limousines on the day (There are a few of us who, when all is said and done, could do with a bit of Disappearing, and the axle couldn't take it). d wore gold, and Karen, one of her Matrons, wore white, which meant she was mistaken for the bride and given free drink, while the actual bride was charged for hers. I'd written vows, and, as you might be beginning to suspect by now, I'd banged on rather a lot, so the registrar had to cut them in half and dole them out to us, line by line. Once we'd both arrived at the venue, a bunch of my friends made it their job to keep us apart till the ceremony was about to start, which involved, on more than one occasion, shoving me entirely unceremoniously into closets. And, admittedly, due to a slight cueing malfunction, d walked down the aisle not to the traditional wedding march but to the Godfather Waltz.

Dawson White, aged five, fell in love with my friend Rebecca, because a) she had breasts and she was talking to him, and b) he was absolutely stoned out of his brains and high on cake. We terrified and mortified my friend Caroline, who was in a newish relationship at the time, with the American tradition of gartering. As it happened, her boyfriend Gedas got to do the honours, but her face was a picture of "I'll get you for this Fyler, you see if I don't!"

We didn't really have much imagination in those days, so our "wedding list" consisted of Argos vouchers - yeah, we're that classy - and by the end of the night, our friend Tig, who, in weird conjunction with Russell Crowe, had been responsible for our meeting in the first place, had gotten us our best gift - soothing minty foot-rub cream.

And the thing is, everything they tell you is nonsense - it's not the best day of your life at all. Least, not if you do it right. It's the beginning of the best phase of your life.

Seven years on, there's never a day without Something. Some look, some line, some mad private joke that we don't even have to speak out loud cos we're on the same wavelength. Most days, there are whole cavalcades of Somethings, from getting up to laying down, and often far beyond. Life is a never-ending parade of Somethings. If you find the person that makes them, for the most part, Something Good, you're onto a winner.

It's interesting that people talk about the Seven Year Itch as something that makes people antsy to get away from each other. You never hear the Other Itch mentioned. The Itch I have. The Itch for more. Just more of whatever comes, day after day and night after night. The Itch to hold what you have, careful and close but not close enough to squash it or crush it, and to take it forward into whatever comes, and bring it safely to wherever it's ultimately supposed to be.


Just like carrying a wedding cake on the tube.