BIG DAY, SMALL TALK

Recently we went to yet another wedding which was, as far as it goes, all rather lovely of course, just as these things are supposed to be, but of course they still fill me with trepidation and dread simply because they are “social occasions” and “social occasions” are exactly the kind of thing that will fill me with trepidation and dread, and so it goes and so it goes…

However, I didn’t find it quite as bad as I sometimes have done in the past because the event itself didn’t involve anyone I know. I was there as a “significant other”, a “plus one” and so, because almost nobody there had ever met me, people’s expectations of me were zero and, perhaps more importantly when it comes to these things, as I had little in the way of “expectations” of them, I could relax a bit, knowing that I wouldn’t have to dredge around in my mind to remember to ask for news of Great Aunt Mabel’s operation, or the doings of various offspring whose names (and even their possible actual existence) I may very well have completely forgotten about as I seem to do quite often when it comes to the results of people’s attempts at breeding.

Things did get a little dicey during the speeches when there was a reference to “everyone there knowing that they were there because they’d played a significant part in the young couple’s life…” and I was sitting there thinking “…but I’ve never even met them before today…” but that was just my mind doing its thing again and surfing around for opportunities and scenarios for social awkwardness, just in case I’d relaxed a little, and I managed to distract myself by being irritated at the people I’d never met before texting furiously away at the table instead of failing to be charmed by my “witty banter” (of which there was little because I knew that saying nothing is generally the best policy when it comes to my interactions with complete strangers).

Actually, when I was sitting and eating at someone else’s great expense, I’d actually forgotten that there even would be speeches. I know that they’re fairly common occurrences at weddings but somehow the notion had slipped from my memory. In fact I’d forgotten so much about what the general rituals and “expectations” (there’s that word again) involved in a wedding are that much of what unfolded did rather surprise me, even though I’m sure that everyone else there fully expected and anticipated much of it.

Instead, there I was quietly wondering away to myself about what was going to happen in that long “lull” between the end of the meal and the arrival of the evening guests two hours later when up popped the toast master (you see what I did there…?) and suddenly the time was consumed by various people speaking all kinds of pleasant words and saying the usual terribly nice things (about people I hardly knew, I grant you), but even so, they remain the kinds of words which always, always also still manage to surprise me, in the sense that other people seem to just know what it is that they should be saying.

You see there is a “form” to those words and yet they always surprise me. There are things that are supposed to be said and which are said and yet, if you asked me to actually write down the sorts of things that are supposed to be said in one of those speeches, even now after just having heard some, I’d still struggle to come up with any of them.

I tend to think it’s because I struggle with “small talk…” All those nice little bits of “chit-chat” which somehow grease the wheels of these social occasions but which have never come all that easily to me. During the “other lull” – the bit whilst the photographs are endlessly taken (I think my mum and dad had about half a dozen taken, but that was in the 1950s when such things were less “important”) and the guests have little to do but stand or sit around in the bar – I overheard lots of “chit-chat” amongst all sorts of people who did, I suppose, have the slight advantage of actually knowing each other and I realised that I would still struggle with it if any of them actually came over and cornered me which, thankfully, they did not.

Not because it’s not “interesting” as such, although to be fair, a great deal of what I overheard didn’t seem to be all that interesting to me, but because there would be a great big “panic alert” going off in my brain and I would babble whilst looking desperately around for (as Roy Walker might have put it) a “well known phrase or saying” which I might be expected to say (usually of the “didn’t she look lovely…?” variety) that simply always fails to just trip off my mind.

I don’t know, perhaps it’s just that I’m very bad at just “being myself” and having the artificial persona that I generally walk about wearing stripped right down to the “real me” underneath usually just reveals that there’s nobody home. Sometimes I think that it’s far better perhaps to wear the “fake” me and let him flounder around in public instead.

After all, weddings are, by their nature, very “artificial” environments anyway, given that the guests aren’t necessarily people who would normally spend any time in each other’s company, and even the ones who would are in a situation which is unfamiliar.

If a group of people go to the pub or the park and the discussion, debate or banter gets rather “heated” it seldom involves anyone else. There may be tutting, but very few people beyond the group around you know you from Adam and – at worst - might just ask the landlord to ask you to turn it down a bit. At weddings, however, the whole room beyond the conversation might know you - or at least know of you – and nobody wants to run the risk of upsetting Great Aunt Mabel or of being the person or persons who “ruin” the big day for everyone and never get to hear the end of it.

Mind you, I could be wrong about that. After all, the fact that fights do happen at these events is proof enough of that, although thankfully there was none of that (at least that I was aware of) last week…

Then, of course, there is the small but pertinent matter of the discotheque jockey who is charged with providing musical entertainment of a dubious nature throughout the course of the evening and which generally makes most conversation fairly impossible anyway. The Wedding DJs are a strange subspecies of human anyway who seem to act as if they have a certain level of “expectation” weighing heavily upon their shoulders all the time. Some feel the need to intersperse the music with “gags” and “banter” whilst others want to involve all of the “Great Aunt Mabels” in games and other dubious “fun” whilst playing the kinds of tunes that they think will make the party go with a bang, even if you’ve specifically asked them not to.

They know best, it seems, and they can take it as a personal slight if you’re just not the kind of people who want to get up and have a bit of a boogie, or whatever it is they call it nowadays. This time, the DJ at our event also had a “video” aspect to his bag of tricks (you could TXT your requests – maybe that’s what they were doing over the meal…?), which meant a rather alarming tendency to take photographs and have them put up on his big screen alongside the music and which didn’t endear him to our table, I can tell you.

Later on in the evening, he did seem to be having a bit of a breakdown at the general lack of response to his set, bellowing at people not to leave as they headed home and generally playing songs with titles themed around his sense of disappointment (“Please don’t go” and so forth) although personally I was impressed by his choice of some Jethro Tull as the evening food was being served up, even if very few others appeared to be.

To be honest I’m still a little twitchy about the “W” word, and I still get awfully angry about the sheer amount of money that gets thrown at these events for no very good reason by people who genuinely seem to believe that they’re “supposed” to have everything and that the entire thing will be “ruined” if you don’t have exactly the correct number of some trinket or other that nobody else is remotely concerned about. Not that this was that kind of event, but I have been force-fed enough episodes of “Don’t Tell the Bride” (Don’t ask...) to know about that side of the whole sorry business...

Often, I just find myself thinking “Hey! Life isn’t perfect! Deal with it! You ought to have spent the money on a decent holiday instead!” which probably really isn’t in the spirit of the thing at all, but enough of them learn that for themselves later on, so they don’t need me burbling on about it.