Ding dong

We were hardly in the mood for it, but Thursday morning Jane and I flew from Inverness to Luton for the wedding of Chris, my youngest brother, to Sondra, from Canada.

To cut a long story short, we had a great time. Four days of doing practically nothing except lots of eating and drinking. Jane and I are both used to constantly thinking ahead, ticking off items in our mental 'to-do' lists. So it took a while to get used to sitting back and just letting things happen.

Many thanks to Ian and Leslie, and Mum and Peter for their generous hospitality. In between, I thought the staff at Horwood House struck an excellent balance between attentiveness and informality.

A couple of weeks before the wedding, Leanne, Sondra's sister sent secret emails to as many guests as possible, suggesting that we all did a spontaneous flash mob' dance at some point during the evening. It read "Hi! I'm Sondra's sister Leanne, and I'm trying to arrange something very special (and secret) for the wedding of Sondra and Chris: a flash mob! For those of you unfamiliar with the term, this is basically a surprise dance performed by everyone. The "choreography" is very, very simple; the effect is based on surprise and size. It's going to be tricky to arrange, with people coming from around the world, but that's just what makes it special; no way are they going to suspect that this is what we are up to!" You may have seen adverts, or clips on YouTube, where, suddenly, lots of people start dancing in a train station, for example. A nice idea, I thought. It would certainly be a surprise for them. I read the email and thought 'I will discretely keep out of the way – it may be a good time to go to the bar.' Further emails followed, with detailed instructions and even videos on YouTube on how to do the dance (to 'I got a feeling' by The Black Eyed Peas). The choreography was definitely NOT 'very, very simple', but then anything beyond pogo-ing is going to be complicated to me. I was not alone; both my mother and Ian, my other brother, were adamant that they would not be getting involved. We agreed that it would not matter because surely all the Canadian side of the family would be less reserved and happy to join the flash mob.
Friday morning, the morning of the wedding, and Jane and I went to Sondra's so that Jane could do her nails. Leanne was also there and, when Sondra was not listening, asked me if I had been practising the dance? 'Alas not,' I replied - what with Ullapool driving tests and Doris it had been the last thing on my mind - and I made some excuse about not getting time to see the video. "Oh, don't worry," she reassured me, "just follow what I do and there will be a bit where you and Matthew (Chris' son) do a little solo bit, so just follow Matthew at that point." Damn! There seemed to be no way out of this.

We went over to Ian's to get dressed for the wedding and I quickly went online to have a look at Leanne's YouTube video. I tried to con Ian into believing that he HAD to do the dance, so the two of us stood in his front room hopelessly practising this stupid dance - we couldn't even get past the first swirly-arm bit. We both took different options; Ian's was to point-blank refuse to do the dance, mine was to point-blank refuse to do the dance sober.
It was a great day. The weather was perfect, the hotel did a good job of looking after us without getting in the way, I did my MC-ing bit, the speeches were all good and everyone was having a good time. Chris and Sondra looked like they were bursting with happiness.
My step-daughter, Rachel, thought the prospect of me dancing completely hilarious and insisted that someone video the event. Unfortunately for her (but fortunately for me), no-one seems to have done so. So you will just have to take my word for it that, after some beers, wine, champagne and many Tanqueray and tonics, my performance in the flash mob dance would have brought a tear to the eye of Michael Jackson, Gene Kelly and the like.