Jumping over brooms

It seems that we are to be surrounded by weddings this year. Most significantly for me, my dear best friend from high school is getting married this July and I have just bought her wedding gift. I consulted the appropriate list from the store where my friend and her husband to be have registered, chose something I would like myself and bought it. It's sitting behind me now in my study as I'm typing this, actually, looming like a huge monolith. It's not big, but it is heavy, so I'm now worrying about how I'm going to get it from the car to the reception... what if there's not a table for gifts? What if it ends up coming back with us in the car because I didn't know what to do with it and amidst the wedding throng there was not an appropriate moment to ask? How am I going to wrap it? Of course all this worrying about the gift is probably transference. Really I'm venting my secret fear of being left an old maid and never having a wedding day of my own... sob...sob... poor me :-)

Putting all of my highly unattractive bitterness and self-pity aside, all of these weddings have got me in a thinking mood. My friend has opted for a civil wedding ceremony at a pretty riverside hotel near where she lives. I've never been to a civil marriage so I was curious as to what goes on at one (forewarned is forearmed, so they say) and thus I fired up my computer. The wonderful entity that is the internet pointed me in the direction of various running orders and scripts detailing the vows to be made. One of the most interesting sites belonged to Cambridgeshire Council, who provide a helpful list of music that might be appropriate to use at a wedding, along with the full track listings of the CDs which they keep at the Cambridge register office. As I scrolled down the list I was amused to find that the opening track on one of them was "It's Over" by Roy Orbison. Hearing that would certainly make a great start to some couple's new life together, wouldn't it?

Speaking of Roy Orbison, I'm reminded of the fact that the late, great John Peel chose "It's Over" as one of his Desert Island discs, having heard it blaring out from a nearby factory as he stood on Stowmarket railway station early one morning. Since my friend is getting hitched not a million miles away from Stowmarket and Peel Acres, I hope that the celebrations are infused with a hint of the Peelian sensibility, with wine, merriment and good conversation in profuse quantities. Indeed, may her marriage and those of all our friends and relatives who are jumping over brooms this summer be as happy, long-lasting and fecund as Peel and the Pig's.