My mum and dad celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary today and family and friends gathered in Cheddar to wish this amazing couple all the best and to create enough material for a whole series of "You Can Choose Your Friends" if only ITV had had the foresight to commission it.
At least one set of great grandparents, both sets of grandparents and now my parents have all achieved this impressive milestone and if I am going to follow in their footsteps I am going to have to get my marital skates on and start following a healthier lifestyle regime and maybe invest in some kind of ventilator to keep my body going once my soul had departed.
But I'd only have to get to 92, which is not impossible.
And find someone prepared to put up with me for five decades, which seems somewhat less likely.
A few of the guests had been at the wedding back on the 18th July 1959: my Uncle Michael and Aunty Margaret, my (not actually) Aunty Jean and my wonderful grandma Doris. Now 98 years old, she sat at the end of the table, happily eating her lunch, pretty much oblivious to who everyone was or why she was there, but hitting occasional patches of lucidity such as when called upon to quote the rhyme in the Valentine's Card that she had bought for mum to give to dad (I think she bought it for mum to give to another boy, but let's gloss over that at this happy time) 58 years ago. It read, "Come on over and do your stuff,
I like guys wot treat me rough!" Quite a forward missive for a 13 year old girl to be sending, but these were different, more patriarchal times. Without that card though a good 75% of the people round this table would never have existed.
But luckily for this blog the card did its trick.
There were too many highlights to document in their entirety, but there were some wonderful moments. Such as when my sister launched a massive party popper in the shape of a champagne bottle over the happy couple, but most of the papery and glittery contents ended up landing over the face and lap of my surprised and confused wheelchair bound grandma, who was amusingly disconcerted and shocked by the sudden deluge. My dad's speech, ostensibly purporting to be a homage to the love of his life, took some strange and unexpected turns, including a slightly bizarre digression about an ex-pupil of his who went on to become a suspect in the Yorkshire Ripper case. In fact for a moment the speech seemed in danger of dwelling more on the crimes of the Yorkshire Ripper than on the wonders of my mother. Luckily the assembled crowd found this inappropriately amusing and dad was soon back on track. I had been videoing the speech on my iPhone, but alas the battery run out just before that point as I feel that I could probably have just written the whole speech down verbatim and had the makings of an excellent play. The badinage and heckles coming from the family were excellent value too. I am very lucky to be part of such a wonderful and (mainly accidentally) hilarious family. Not only because I love them all very much, but because it makes my job as a writer very easy. Dad suggested that I should turn his speech into next year's Edinburgh show, telling me it should be called, "Herring's Mess", though I think he might have been unaware of the double entendre possibilities of such a title. But I quite like it as a title. I think the speech was better than my dad thought and I think he might have been slightly crest fallen that he got so many unexpected laughs. But it was laughter based on love rather than cruelty. He is inadvertently much funnier than I could ever be by trying. But don't tell him I said that.
It's an astonishing achievement to celebrate a Golden wedding and my mum and dad are an amazing love story, that proves it is possible for two people to love each other for their whole lives.
I told my 18 year old niece that she had to remember everything that had happened and then try and tell everyone about it when she was 98 in 2089. I also warned her that she might already be 98 and that everything that she thought was happening around her might be just her memories, as the care home staff tried to tidy up around her. But even if it was that, it was a lovely day and a great thing to be celebrating. I hope mum and dad can live to see my Golden Wedding, although suspect it might be enough of a stretch that they might live to see me get married. But I hope they can hold on til they're in their 120s just in case. Doris certainly seems likely to keep going that long. If the shock of a massive party popper discharging over her isn't enough to kill her, then I don't think anything will ever get her.
