Ignoring the "I forgets" and writing wedding speeches
So far, there have been six oh my God I forgots — and we haven’t even hit the M8 yet. But though my heart has lurched at every one, I’ve held tough against all six; I’m embroidering the edges of a silk pashmina as my husband drives. I think the repetitive action helps. I think I’ll embroider all the way to England.
On the outskirts of Dublin, daughter 1 taps me on the shoulder from the back seat. “Oh my God, I forgot,” she says, “Granny’s picking us up from Bristol.”
I call to mind Granny’s driving, which operates on the principle of speeding up around lethal bends and going tortoise-slow on the straight.
“It’ll be fine,” I say, biting off a thread.
I look at my daughters. Both are recovering from a night spent dancing to the Papa Zitas in a pub; they have been slumped across each other since leaving Cork, like a pair of seals sated with too much fish.
“Oh my God, it’s like the G-force when Granny gets going,” daughter 2 says, sitting up and leaning forward, “can’t Dad drive?”
“We’ll see when we get there,” I say.
“Oh my God I forgot,” my youngest daughter says as we park in the airport, “dad’s doing a speech at the wedding.”
My sister-in-law, whose wedding we are attending in Bath, has asked my husband to give a speech — a “brother-of-the-bride sort of thing” — in place of their late father. On the whole, my husband seems to be as nervous about delivering this speech as he is prepared for it.
“When are you planning to write your speech?” I ask, turning the corner on my pashmina.
“We’ll chat about it on the plane,” he says, distractedly; the Ashes are on the radio and he is hunched forward with his ear angled towards it.
“I might not feel like chatting about it then,” I say.
On the plane, I resume embroidering my pashmina, lifting my head from time to time to consider the perils of public speaking; my husband, who is sitting across the aisle from me, scribbles furiously, lifting his head now and again to smile. After half an hour, he sits back and shuffles his papers. He looks dangerously pleased with the result.
He leans towards me across the aisle, taps his papers and, in a whisper, says he briefly considered mentioning the way his soon-to-be-married sister described the groom, when she first met him two years ago.
I have never forgotten her description: “Hung like a donkey and can go all night.”
I sit, embroidering with fierce concentration.
“Hey, girls,” my husband says, rousing daughters 1 and 2 from their torpor on my left, “I thought about starting my speech with something like, “Let’s hope this marriage lasts longer than the last one. What d’you reckon?”
Daughter 1, who sits on my left, digs her fingernails into my arm.
“Oh my God, Mum. Do something. He can’t put that in his speech.”
I think about my private campaign. I am doing so well with it. It would be a shame to spoil things now.
“Know your audience,” I say to my husband.
“What do you mean ‘know your audience’?”
“Your mother is in it,” I say.
“Oh my God, Mum. Seriously. Do something,” daughters 1 and 2 say.
I roll up my pashmina.
“Pass your speech over,” I say.
“You can have a quick look at it when we get to Somerset,” he says.
“Pass it over.”
His speech is punchy and very sweet. “Nice job,” I say.
At the wedding reception, the groom calls for quiet and introduces my husband to the wedding-guests. My husband stands. He waves his speech-papers in the air, all bonhomie and champagne.
“I’ve written something,” he says, “but what the hell.” Scrunching the papers up, he tosses them in the air like a bouquet.
I catch daughter 1’s eyes across the room. “Oh. My. God,” she mouths with a panic-face.
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