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I won’t give all details of X’s wedding, I may get carried away! but she had long white dress, veil, silver and white ribbons – the lot, and Y’s 2 little girls in ‘Edwardian’ dresses sent from England as bridesmaids. Many thank yous – the flowers are gorgeous – they arrived whilst we were having dinner – by a bearded young man full of apologies they were so late but he was marrying the florist on Saturday and she had to go and be fitted for her dress and and and! We were doubly pleased we’d decided to dine at home because a) we’d been so extravagant and (b) we were fixed to play bridge with different partners at the club and would have had one eye on the clock (and t’other up the chimney). As it was we had a luscious meal of avocado pear, fillet steak, creamed potatoes and broad beans and sauce followed by ice with raspberries and cream – super. He’s been saving for 2 years for it he says – a dinner party for 20 at the most expensive place. Neither his parents or we could budge him to postpone it or move it to Y which would have more than halved the cost. The dinner was superb – wine flowed, followed by cigars, liqueur coffee in enormous brandy glasses and special birthday cake. It must have cost every penny of $500. I gather after we left at 12 the singing got a trifle bawdy – Elizabethan songs or no, they were asked to desist! We went off to the old town hall for what had been described as a concert. It was in fact a unique variety show. There were only five turns, of which one was also the compere. First a tapdancer, very professional. Then the compere himself. He did a turn with a handpuppet of a grey rabbit, which was extremely skillful, and he also got a girl of about eight from the audience to ‘help’ him, whom he treated with great sympathy, and they did a card trick between them, which the puppet nearly gave away. There were two men who did a fast moving turn with a variety of normal string puppets (though with heaven knows how many strings each); a man with a harmonica and a turbaned conjuror with an exotic-looking girl assistant who got stabbed through the throat, and elevated to the horizontal in midair without visible means of support and the rest of the time danced and weaved about the stage to the rather loud music – both no doubt designed to take our attention off the sleight of hand! It was all jolly good clean fun!  We had an ‘elevenses’. Actually the first people arrived at 11.15 a.m. and the last left at approx 10.15 p.m. after being told it was time to go (hints hadn’t worked!) It was a fabulous day – hot and no wind and everyone drank like fish but no one seemed to get sozzled cos they all are like horses too! We had about 25 adults plus 10 children here and got through nearly 4 dozen home brew, 7 bottles wine, 20 litres soft drink and a similar quantity of fruit juice! |
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