The journey with the Master of Surprises begins on July 30th 1977, though I
suspect that he’d been my travelling companion for many years prior to that.
The year 1977 can be remembered for many things:
the Silver Jubilee of the Queen (Her Majesty); the sudden and untimely passing
of the King (Elvis); but most of all for the joining together in Holy
Matrimony, or Marital Kombat, to use my favourite description, of a very thin,
shy, Eiona ******* to Huw Roberts, both
of Morriston, Swansea.
My father was a quiet and unassuming man but he had
the most mischievous sense of humour, which on reflection, I believe I must
have inherited from him. His laughter
and the wicked twinkle in his blue eyes were so infectious you’d almost be
creased over if you just happened to catch his eye in particular situations
where silence was required.
We spent many rib-tickling hours together watching
simple things on TV such as Bob Monkhouse’s Mad Movies and all the other black
and white movies which were shown way back in the Sixties. Stan Sennet was a particular favourite of
ours.
On my Wedding Day, I should have expected him to
tease me about something; I innocently presumed it would be during the Wedding
Reception. I was wrong. He started before the Wedding Service even
began. He proudly walked me, his only
daughter, three quarters of the way down that aisle then stopped, turned
around, looked me straight in the eyes and with a twinkly look, said in a voice
loud enough for everyone else to hear, “Chi mo’yn mynd nôl?” which roughly
translates into English, “D’you want to turn back?”.
I could hear the “Oohs” and “Aahs” and bating of
big breaths bouncing around the walls and pews of the large non-conformist
chapel; you could have cut the atmosphere with a blunt butter-knife. Out of the
corner of my right eye I caught my mother’s worried eyes which telepathically
queried of me, “What on earth is he up to now?” So I just turned him to stone with my left
eye, like you do with your parents when you’re that age, and we proceeded….
Worse
was to come and by that I don’t mean married life or manifestations by the
Master of Surprises; what I’m talking about is that Huw’s Dad was the
officiating minister. Nothing wrong with
that, you may think; he’d been doing this all his life; he would know the
ceremony off by heart - or would he? What
we didn’t realise was that Dad would be more nervous for this particular
wedding. He was so nervous in fact, that
he’d had to write our names down on a piece of paper in case he forgot them.
After
the ceremony, we went out into the vestry to sign the register and to breathe a
few sighs of relief that the worst was over. As I sat and was about to have my photo taken
signing the register, I placed my small posy of flowers on the table and out of
the blue, a big black blob of indelible ink landed on my dress and on my
flowers as the registrar passed me the pen - his fault not mine. I still have my doubts as to whether we were
legally married because we found many mistakes made by the Registrar on that
green piece of paper. We sent it back
once to be rectified but it was returned with two errors still on it. They are still there because the Registrar
died soon after and we haven’t bothered to chase things up. For all I know, that son of ours may well be a
real “barsteward”.
The
Wedding Reception was in the Caswell Bay hotel on the Gower Peninsula
and it passed in a murky haze of Asti Spumante bubbles and Players Gold Leaf
cigarette smoke. We’d parked our car
behind the hotel the previous evening as we were to drive away on our honeymoon
from there straight after the Reception.
When
I say ‘our car’ what I really mean is ‘Huw’s car’, but seeing as by then we
were already locked in Mortal Combat, I’d adopted the ‘what’s his is mine’ way
of logic. We hadn’t been married long
enough for that logic to stretch to ‘what’s mine is his’ and if I really have
to be truthful, twenty-nine years down the line it still hasn’t stretched that
far. I haven’t got past that stage of
the journey. With a bit of luck I never
shall, either.
Our
car had been left in a place where it would not be seen or got at to be smeared
in lipstick or have a kipper deposited in the ventilation system. That was the intention anyway, but in the same
way as the road to heaven is paved with good intentions so did our good
intentions lead to hell because as soon as we walked into the Reception Suite,
there it was for all to behold, in full view of the guests and behind the
bride’s table; the shimmering shiny silver metalwork of ‘our’ Vauxhall Viva. Indeed
it was shiny because to keep my mind off things I’d been given the task of
washing and polishing it the previous afternoon. That itself was a once-in-a-lifetime
experience because I haven’t been so neuronless as to accept the offer again.
We
left for our honeymoon in a car which was fully decorated with ribbons,
posters, balloons, but luckily no smelly kipper in the ventilation system. We got as far as the village of Mumbles,
a mile away, to find ourselves stuck in the middle of the annual Mumbles
Carnival procession.
I
knew just what it’s like after that situation to be a celeb because dotty old
women and drunken young men kept tapping the car windows asking us if we were
part of the carnival and wishing us good luck for the future. It became quite frightening because the car
was being rocked in the crowd and we were stuck and unable to move for an
hour. When we eventually made it out to
the other side of the village Huw pulled into the nearest petrol station to get
the lipstick cleaned up because it can damage the bodywork - of the car, not
me. With hindsight, I’m lead to suspect
that my bodywork was already being damaged insidiously inside me, so off we
innocently set on our journey together.
I
remember nothing of the first part of the journey because I’d fallen asleep and
was as dead as John Cleese’s parrot until we stopped at the Easton in Gordano
Services on the M5 heading for Cornwall.
The only thing which sticks in my mind was going to the loo in those
services and as I pulled my knickers down, I deposited about a ton of rice on
the floor around me. It was embarrassing
enough for me because the cubicle doors were a good foot above the floor so
everyone must have seen and not just heard it, but even more embarrassing for
Huw was that when he undid his zipper the same happened to him in a communal
urinal!
Now
here’s a bit of useless information I found on the World Wide Web about the
tradition of throwing rice:
“The basis for the
predominant theory as to why rice and other grains, such as wheat, have played
a prominent role in marriage ceremonies for centuries, is that they are fraught
with symbolism of fertility and of prosperity. By throwing rice at the bride
and groom at a wedding, guests symbolically wish them a lifetime full of these
blessings.”
All
I can say is that fertility and prosperity were not things I was ever blessed
with. I may have been bestowed with all
the female requirements regarding fertility but I think that someone forgot to
chuck the Fison’s Fertiliser my way at the right time because I only managed to
produce the one sprog, and as for prosperity - just how do we measure
that? In monetary terms? If so then I
must have gone to the wrong cash dispenser; if measured in indefinable or
ethereal terms, then I admit to having riches beyond my wildest dreams. Let
me invite you to our honeymoon…
Question:
What is a honeymoon salad
Answer:
Lettuce alone
Read
on and you’ll understand the relevance of the joke. Huw was entirely in charge of the honeymoon
arrangements. He’d consulted with one of his colleagues in school and she’d
given him an Egon Ronay guide to the worst honeymoon destinations in the
history of history itself.
What
was really mind-boggling however, was that he’d booked a village Inn in North
Cornwall without mentioning it to his colleague; when he returned the guide to
her and she asked him if he’d found it useful it emerged that she too had
booked in the very same place for the very same week with her husband and ten
year old son. The obvious disadvantage
was that their room was next door to ours and we had very thin walls.
We
made a pact with them: “You keep schtumm and we’ll keep schtumm!”, about the
arrangements, that is – I mean how can you keep quiet on your honeymoon, eh?
Our
little secret had its benefits however because when we arrived there at 10 o’clock in the evening we found
stiff celebratory drinks on the bar ready and waiting for us.
Hindsight
is wonderful isn’t it? I now know I must
have had MS developing in the quiet, insidiously evil way it does, because I
felt an overwhelming need to sleep every early-evening after a day’s
sightseeing.
We’d
get back to the Inn and I would crash out on the bed to sleep the sleep of the
dead; it was indeed the sleep of the dead because I must surely have gone to
hell on the Monday evening because I was woken very suddenly from my nap by
(imagine Sandie Shaw) “I-I-I-I wonder if one
day that you say that you care, If you say you love me madly, I’ll gladly be
there. Like a puppet on a stttrrrrrriiiinnggg!” It was the local brass band standing right
under our bedroom window where they congregated every Monday night for band
practice.
We
only have to hear the opening chord of ‘Puppet on a String’ on the radio or
telly now and we both just look at each other and laugh, myself in particular,
remembering the reverberation of that brass band in my eardrums, right through
to my semi-circular canals and into the now de-myelinated right ventricle of my
brain.
We
developed a routine of spending the day sightseeing followed by me napping on
the bed whilst Huw read a book. Just how
many honeymoon couples read a book, huh?
Refreshed from our rest we would join our friends and some of the locals
in the bar for a toasted sarnie or chicken and chips ‘in the basket’. Huw had teasingly ordered soup in the basket
one evening only to be told it wasn’t on the menu that evening but that maybe
it would appear later in the week.
We
were totally bemused by the rural routine of that village such as the brass
band; Postman Pat’s Cornish cousin, Postman Pastie, picking up the mail the
same time everyday; the farm tractor going in one direction first thing in the
morning then returning whence it came the same time every evening. But hah! the best was yet to come on the
Thursday evening because I was woken up from my evening nap by a very loud
clanging coming from the church campanologists practising their cadenced
carillons, directly opposite our bedroom.
It is yet another memory which exercises the chuckle muscles.
Within
walking distance of our Inn of the First Happiness
was the Lappa Valley Steam Railway, so like big kids we thought we’d give it a
go. I was only twenty two years young, so I wasn’t far off being a kid anyway.
As the steam train puffed in a forward direction, Thomas the Tank Engine-like,
so did the black smoke travel in the opposite direction depositing soot on all
us passengers in the open carriages.
We
stepped off the train looking like speckled hens, so a bath was in order when
we got back to our Inn. Any notions of sex and romance had flown out
the window right at the start because of the circumstances of having a room
next door to a work colleague, so just a plain, straightforward bath would have
sufficed. It wasn’t to be however, as
the bathroom which served all six guestrooms had no running water. It hadn’t all week and as far as I know it
may well remain so today.
I’ll
say it now and I’ll repeat it over and over so much that you’ll need Remegel®
by the end of the book, that I am not a good sailor. Whether this is MS related or not, no doctor
has ever been able to tell me though one thing stands and that is the fact that
I have vestibular damage; though ‘stands’ is hardly the right word in the
following story.
I’m
reminded of a particular jaunt during our honeymoon week to the sleepy seaside
village of Padstow, not that you can describe it as ‘sleepy’ since Rick Stein
moved in; it’s now a positive hive or should I say, a fish-tank of activity.
We
decided to take a boat trip out to “Seal
Island” where, as the
name indicates, you can bob up and down seal-watching. The estuary from where we set off consisted
of paradise-like, fine pale yellow sands and deep aquamarine, clear, calm
waters; in fact the word ‘aquamarine’ must surely have been named after that
place.We
sat on the top deck in the uppermost corner to get the best view but little did
I know when we embarked that it could have been the worst possible place to sit
regarding turbulence. We glided down the
estuary on a sea of serenity then aaaaarggghhh!
We suddenly hit the open Atlantic Ocean.
E: “How long is this trip exactly?”
H: “About an hour and ten minutes.”
E: “You mean I have to suffer this for
another 60 minutes??
H: “Uh- huh”
E: “What d‘you mean by just ‘Uh huh?’ I can’t tolerate this for
that long!”I
was feeling completely disorientated by the upwards, downwards, sideways,
thisways, thatways motion as we hit the open sea but people around me were
beginning to get seriously seasick.
People right next to me and all around me were violently throwing up
over the edge or onto the deck below.
E: “I really need to go to the loo for a
wee,”.......because
I wasn’t feeling nauseous but my bladder had the sudden urge (another
pre-cursor to MS?) to empty itself.
H: “Well if you must.”
E: “I must. I’m going” as I staggered amongst the throngs of
chuckers-up.
I
weaved and bobbed my way to the lower deck only to find even more people puking
as they queued for the toilet, the sight and sound of which suggested to my
bladder that it didn’t really need emptying, so I made my way back unsteadily
to a calm as ever looking Huw.
The
voyage was gut-churning and I was trying hard to hold on to some kind of fixed
point on the horizon, just like ballet dancers after doing a long pirouette, to
keep myself orientated. I started
muttering inside my head, “Our Father, which art in heaven….”...another big
wave….”hallowed be thy name...” …another wave….”Thy Kingdom come…” …another gut
churner… and so on… “Forever and ever … OKAY THEN take me Lord, I’m YOURS!”
It
felt that dire when suddenly we seemed to round Seal Island
and calm reigned once more. We watched seals play nonchalantly in the calm,
aquamarine waters for five minutes until we hit the open sea again and the gut
churning re-introduced itself to my body.
However the ordeal was not over as the ship’s driver decided to stop in
mid-ocean to hook up a stray sky-blue-pink buoy.
E: (green-faced) “This is purgatory.”
H: “I must admit it’s a bit rough.”
E: “A bit??”
After
what seemed to be eternity we started gliding back up the calm waters of the
estuary and as we dis-embarked, Huw asked the ‘driver’, “Is it normally as
rough as this?” “Arrr, no sir,” (imagine
Cornish accent) “If I had known it would have turned out this bad, I would’ve
cancelled the sailing.”
We
sat on the quayside for half an hour to steady my legs, followed by a sherry in
a hostelry to steady my nerves.The
honeymoon tale ends with note about a fig leaf.
The church opposite the pub boasted a fig tree growing out of its
walls. Legend has it that anyone who
dared touch it would be struck down dead within a short time of doing so. There was a book inside the church which kept
a record of people who had died shortly after coming into contact with it. We dared each other and we hesitated; we
double-dared each other and hesitated again, then thought at least that if we
‘go’ we’d ‘go’ together. We’re still
here twenty-nine years later. I never
was superstitious.
