Married At Millionth Sight

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I’ve now been blogging for over 39.9% of my life. I won’t stop til it’s 100%.

We dragged our reluctant kids into London for the wedding party of one of my (many) friends. It was a bit of sweaty jaunt to West London, but given how much neither of them had wanted to go they coped very well.

This was actually a wedding party - the ceremony had happened five years ago with social distancing and very limited numbers, during Covid and the happy couple had finally got round to getting their (genuinely many) friends together for a celebration.

It was an interesting idea to have the party so long after the wedding, not least because of the fact that they still did speeches. Every married couple should be made to do this, not really for the cases like this where the couple loved and respected each other even more with every passing day, but more for the couples who had realised what a terrible mistake they had made, but were making the best of it. Oh, the shielded resentments, the breaking of the rose-tinted spectacles, the inappropriate flirting with the partner’s siblings and friends. It could be some of the most explosive theatre there has ever been.

Sadly this afternoon there was nothing but confirmation that the marriage was a strong and happy one. But think of how many marriages would be crumbling at this point. It’s very important that both bride and groom (or bride and bride or groom and groom or whatever term you want to use) both get to speak and maybe you have to draw lots to see who goes first. You’d probably both need to write two speeches, just in case your partner goes first and lays into you - you don’t want to be stuck saying how great they are after that. Maybe you should also have to draw lots as to which speech you read out?

This could be dynamite. Move over Married at First Sight (oh you have already). Married at a Millionth Sight is going to be the TV hit of the decade.

It’s Catie and my fifteenth wedding anniversary next year. Dare we have a wedding party where we both have to sum up how it’s going so far? Catie’s pretty much done the speech in her last stand up show, though she surely has more ammunition in her arsenal. I only have one speech about her. But which one is it?

Shall we live stream it for twenty quid a pop?

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On the way back from the wedding yesterday I bought the kids some cherry flavoured Tictacs for the journey. I used to love Tictacs when I was a kid, not that we had the array of flavours they have now and so I was suspicious of the cherry ones. But I tried some and it turned into a very Proustian moment for me.

Firstly because I was eating Tictacs again, having not eaten many in the last 45 years. I remembered eating them as a kid and suddenly had a hankering for my Tictac of choice, the orange Tictac. I didn’t like it when they mixed (I think) orange and lime ones in the same tub, but I liked the orange ones on their own. I’d eat the mint ones sometimes, but they were quite sharp and not my favourite, but would do the job if you needed a Tictac but there were no orange ones around.

For some reason once the Tictacs were finished I liked to fill the tiny container with water, so that I had a very small flask on my person if I got thirsty later. I’ve told Catie about this before and she finds it very amusing. Tictacs are now in a bigger little tub, but still not big enough to carry much liquid.

Do they still do orange Tictacs? Probably. Not sure I should risk getting addicted to them again.

Secondly I had my Marcel Proust remembrance of things past moment (pretty much all I know about Proust comes from the fabulous Monty Python sketch) because the cherry Tictacs taste quite a bit like original flavour Tunes. My Grandma always had a packet in her handbag and I’d eat them like sweets, rather than the serious medicine/drug they actually are.

So I was taken back to drinking slightly tainted water out of a Tictac tub and feeling cool with Phil Fry at Fairlands Middle School and to Benson Street in Middlesbrough and my Grandma’s lounge. All from one little taste explosion.

Would Proust have been as successful if he’d written about Tictacs instead of biscuits? (spoiler alert- but it’s a very long book and so I’ve saved you some trouble there and also won the summarising Proust competition)

Who knows?

For those of you who think time travel isn’t possible, I have a futuristic pill to prove you wrong.

I wouldn’t like to live in the Seventies again, but it was nice to visit.

Two poems for you lucky paid subs. Jump on board non-paying scum.