Suit

I don't know much. But I know one thing. It's a long and involved route to Reading. I know this becasue I went there on Saturday to attend the chirstenings of my little cousins Christopher and Gabriella. To do this involved me taking a series of decisions that lead to me being sat here, writing this blog, and not at the cinema at Meridian watching Superman Returns, even after Blake bought me a ticket and let me beat him at badminton. I will also try and get Welsh language television, Honda adverts and black-and-white cookies in, just to add interest.

The first decision was not mine. It was forced upon me by my Mum. My parents are remarkably cool people. I mentioned in a blog a while back that they had taken in their hugely depressed and homeless-through-his-own-inertia twenty-six-year-old son without a word, fed him for six months and then hired him a van and helped him move house. That man was me, and I am eternally greatful to them for it. Blood is supposed to be thicker than water, but I have the best blood anyone could ask for. However, my Mum still has a couple of blind spots - a maternal tendency to think the worst about what might happen to my sister and I and then prepare for it long before it doesn't happen, and my hair.

The first is easily dealt with - book ahead, ring home when you arrive and always bring back a fridge magnet. The second is an intractable mountain that faith simply cannot move, and she's a big girl. Mum has never been able to get round my belief that, as it is my hair, I should be the judge of when it needs to be cut. She thinks I look good with nice, short gelled hair and that when the ringlets in my hair start to appear it is time for a trip to the barber's. I think it makes my head look like a balloon, and that when the ringlets appear it is time to start looking in the mirror again. We will never, ever agree on this.

In fact, that which grows out of my body is apparently fair game to my family, like someone else's chips in a restaurant. My cousin Blue (who I could annoy immensely by calling her Lynda, which is actually her name, but I won't because otherwise she's very cool) will, whenever we meet, grab my ears and start making plans to wax my eyebrows. "You'd look hot, babes" she says. I respond, I think, with impeccable logic, "Wouldn't it hurt like nothing else?". She says "No pain, no gain, cuz" and I then ask her to let go of my ears. Every single time I see her. My sister is the same, but she tempers it because as my sister, I can hit her. My Dad tells me to stop biting my fingernails most days and even though I stopped doping it when I was about seven, any motion to touch my face in any way at all is met with a chorus of "Don't pick your nose!". This is especially trying during hayfever season.

However, it was a family do, and a three line whip had been given. Cut your hair and wear a suit, and don't even think about being late. So a trip to the barber's later, I laid out my clothes for the morning and went to bed very, very early. I was up at six-thirty am and out by seven fifteen. I drove to Stoughton, we all piled into Suzy's car and were off by eight, full of criossants and chocolate milk. Ha. Dad led the small convoy and as is traditional, we lost him within about ten minutes when he forgot we were follwing and was gone.

For Dad the open road is like the current Honda ad, where the man in a caravan travels across the world in a series of Hondas, from a tiny motorbike to a Formula 1 racing car to a huge speedboat which he drives (sails? pilots? I don't know) over a waterfall whilst singing "To Dream The Impossible Dream". I like this advert very much, despite my usual and well known feelings about all television advertising. I also like the one with the stamping choir doing an impression of a Honda Civic. But anyway. Whereas Dad likes nothing more than to speed along life's open highway, I go by my own experience of piloting a Renault 5 through Leicester's semi-permanent traffic jams and coping with traffic levels ten times what they were in the late sixties when Dad passed his test. Ours are not the same outlooks.

The practical upshot of all this is that we navigated ourselves to Cheivley services on the M4 where we then shouted at Dad for speeding off and I paid fifteen quid for five cups of coffee. Then to Arborfield Garrison and the do. My cousin James is an ASM in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, and so the ceremony was done by the regimental padre in the garrison church. There is something, I think, especially English about all this, a small church on a big base, where the walls are lined with plaques to the dead of many, many wars and a congregation of thirty sang "I Vow To The My Country". C of E is in many ways a very non-religious religion, being more about the Royal Family and lemon curd than anything else. The idea of a C of E zealot is a very unlikely one.

We hit the house for some post-church refreshments and I was forced to play the guitar for Gabs, who is ten and so full of energy. Christopher is fourteen and so is quite adept at hiding, even on his own Christening. We watched Gabs bounce on the trampoline, fling a frisbee about and do many cartwheels. I remember being that young and having, well, not that much energy, but certainly more than I have now. The other thing little cousins make you do is feel old. Christopher (who I can only really picture as a baby) is now as tall as me and has stubble. Christ. Was I really born in the seventies? Me, Suzy and Lynda sat on the swinging chair under the tree and took the piss out of eachother. Shadrach, Mishach and Abendigo.

It was very hot and blindingly sunny. I ate canapes until I felt ill, and then just as everyone was getting really drowsy from the warmth and the barbecued food, it was time to drive home. I got lost in Wokingham and again in Northampton. But by the time I reached Stoughton I was beyond tired. Suzy made some nachos and we watched TV, but my mind was elsewhere. Don't ask me where, though, as I was too tired to pay attention. I even watched ten minutes of the mutants on Big Brother, simply becasue I didn't have the energy to complain. I drove home and slept for twelve hours, giving quiet thanks to the C of E God (he's a low-key fellow, as I said before, and prefers not to have anyone make a fuss) that I had Sunday to recover.

This morning I played badminton, hurt my neck and here I am. I must admit to being on form for me, only losing four out of six sets of doubles, but then being hollowed out and filled with bees by James, who beat me 15-1 and then 15-0. But I enjoyed it, even if I have spent the rest of the day unable to turn my head by more than five degrees. I had to move the chair so I could watch the cricket without pain. And as for going to the cinema, well, I reckon that would have killed me. Craning at special-effect laden mayhem was not what I wanted to do. I want to see The Notorious Bettie Page instead. There is a picture of Gretchen Moll, who plays the eponymous nude heroine, covered in balloons in Total Film. I will not elucidate further.

I am not sure how I meant to work Welsh TV and fashionable confection into this, but for what it's worth, S4C is strange to watch at first, what with Wales looking almost exactly like England but having a population that speak Martian, but oddly addictive after a while. Today I saw a documentary about what I assume were non-conformist choirs in the Rhondda, and it was wonderful. And as for black-and-white cookies, all I can say is that the Americans must be easily impressed. Two flavours of icing? Stop the presses. Perhaps when I eat one I may be converted forever, but for now they just look like biscuits to me.

Good Night, and Good Luck
Dougal