Of course, seven years ago tonight, we weren't really missing the wedding cake at all.
Fearing for our lives, our eyeballs, our hygeine and the chance of ever eating anything pleasant again, ever, yes. But missing the wedding cake, notsomuch.
See, the thing is, d was coming from the States to marry me. That meant, for her, a whole heap of organisation on her side of the Pond - selling almost everything she owned, or more often giving it away, sending the bits she couldn't live without over to me in the post (oh the boxes. I still, on quiet nights, have nightmares about the boxes), arranging people to look after her folks and her brother, y'know, your basic "move halfway round the world cos a furry balding Welshman asks you to" deal, only with extra guilt. That meant that, while we had long conversations about what we did and didn't want for our wedding, most of the actual practical organisation of the day and its aftermath was down to me on this end. It was my first real test as a proper, grown-up, Responsible Man.
Given that the very first time d arrived in London, almost a year before this, I'd been late arriving at the airport, leaving her feeling standed in a foreign country, then left her pictures of her precious godson on a tube train, taken her on a forced march through the streets of London in December because I didn't use buses at the time, fed her nothing then asked her to marry me before I'd let the poor...as it happened, bronchitis-stricked...girl go to sleep, this was altogether very trusting of her.
Or possibly, it was Mistake One of our married life together, depending on your way of looking at it.
Because, as I briefly mentioned yesterday, I was having my own dramas the month we got married - I was changing jobs to a new employer. That meant my brain was full of website design when really, it should have been entirely focused on the oncoming train of our wedding day. It also meant that having settled on a place to get married and a place to have the reception, we changed the reception venue with about ten days' notice. It meant we got our musician off one of London's bridges, where he was busking. It meant we never did in fact send out any invites, word of mouth being what I thought of as an acceptable delivery method. It meant that, when d arrived and we went to the local registry office to get our licence, they'd never heard of us, and a mad dash and some serious begging were required to get us ok'd for the day when we had people flying from the States to watch us exchange vows and rings (don't even get me started on the rings...). It meant that the day before the wedding, as well as ferrying people and things from Stratford to Gloucester Road, I still had ACTUAL stuff to do, like getting the rings engraved and arranging the limos.
What it didn't have to mean, but, as it happened, did, was that I didn't actually have the money to do these last couple of things...or in fact, book us a honeymoon, until three days before the wedding. It didn't, in all fairness, help that as this was my first pay cheque with a new employer they got the amount wrong by about a thousand pounds, meaning many many phonecalls and emergency payments. This in turn meant that booking the honeymoon ended up having to be a last minute, day-before-the-wedding thing too.
It was quite a day, all in all, that Tuesday. In case you're missing the point here, it's really not as easy as she makes it out to be, being married to me...
Anyway, faced with limited budget and a ridiculously tight turn-around, I hit the web. We were in London, we were newlyweds, you tell me - is there anything more cliched in the world than going to Paris for three days? Probably not, but again you're forgetting that d was coming from the States. She still saw Paris as "the other side of the world", rather than "that city that's closer than, say, Chicago is to where you grew up". Which, quite frankly, was lucky for me.
We flew out (BA at least, not EasyJet - I'm not a total poltroon!), and landed in Paris. Which is when Mistake Two hit us. Really rather hard. What with the trip halfway round the world, and the new job, and the wedding, and everything, there was one thing neither of us had thought to do...which was "learn any French". This, as the Parisians would probably tell you, if you'd bothered to learn their language, was a bloody stupid thing not to do. Because all the signs are in French. All the announcements are in French. All the people...speak French. Very pointedly not, in many Parisian cases, English. I can't really imagine why we thought this would be otherwise, but it's probably a symptom of deeply ingrained cultural imperialism. But it meant we had to enlist the help of a friendly Parisian - they do exist, you just have to really want it - to get the right metro tickets to get us to the hotel I'd rather speedily booked.
We managed to avoid getting killed by drivers, despite their best efforts, and ended up walking down what seemed to be the right street. We wandered down it for quite a while, and then I saw a beautiful white and well-lit hotel.
"That must be it," I said.
"Errr..." said d. "Nnnnno...erm...that's it." She nodded to a building a couple of doors down from Heaven. It was dark, and greasy-looking. We walked in to Reception, only to discover the ceiling was open, with many, many thick wires dangling down almost within reach.
I gulped.
"We can go back to the nice place," I said, knowing that in all probability we really couldn't. Not if we wanted to eat while we were there.
"Nono, it's fine," said d, playing the whole "dutiful wife" role to the hilt. I went forward to claim our room in this monstrosity. The old man behind the desk was an altogether more stereotypical Parisian. He didn't like me much, and most of our dialogue consisted of my broken French, and his unbroken Grunting, much of which appeared to be Gallic for "Stupid English! How can you not learn the language of the country you're going to, eh? You don't want to learn the language properly, don't come! It's not like we want you here anyway, Fatso!"
We got the lift up to our floor. It opened onto pitch blackness. We weren't sure if this was an omen, but it took us a few minutes of stepping out into the dark before we realised the corridor lights were motion-activated. .We found our way to our room, opened the door...
It was a sort of...well, student bedsit, really. From 1973. The colour scheme didn't so much clash as strap on armour and go to war. And there were two beds. Two small, naff, candlewick-covered beds. This was honeymoon night one for d and me. Resolving to push them together before going to sleep, we ventured out for something to eat.
Nothing.
Nada. Zip. Or, in the language of my forefathers, buggerall.
Buggerall of any authentic French quality that is. Burger joints, pizza joints, one unfortunate pink plastic place called The Hippopotamus, which we did end up trying on night two, but about which I'll tell you tomorrow, because in case you hadn't guessed by now, this is retro-week, and we're actually in 2004 for the duration.
You see, what I hadn't realised when looking for a hotel near something famous, was that the Moulin Rouge wasn't a nightclub-cum-bordello in the middle of an otherwise nice, respectable area. It was a nightclub-cum-bordello in the middle of Paris's Red Light District, so whatever people were coming to the area for, it wasn't the charming bistro culture.
We ended up finding the only thing that looked like it gave a damn about food - a Chinese restaurant. A wandering rose-seller wandered in, tried his luck, and sold us a single bloom, which the kindly proprietress put into a washed out beer bottle with water for us. And when all was said and done, we ate well, beneath Parisian stars.
Then we strolled back and pushed our single 70s beds together, giggling into the dinge...
Here in 2011 by the way, blood yesterday was 4.9, this morning, 4.8.
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