We had a lovely time on Saturday at Mim & Ed's wedding in Hampshire. Just the name of the village gives you an idea of the kind of place it was: Martry Worthy. It really was the kind of place you see on Midsomer Murders, which was slightly ironic given the identity of one of the guests - a certain Hercule Poirot, no less.
Anton, Becca and Eve were there too, and both girls were very well behaved during the church ceremony, even if Eve did let out a squeak at the "does any know of any reason why..." bit. After the ceremony the guests moved to Ed's parent's house, a quarter of a mile away. It really was something - I've been to other wedding receptions in country houses that have been smaller than this! The weather was doing it's best to help the afternoon along, and the clouds only closed in just as people were moving in to the marquee for the speeches anyway. The speeches were before the meal for a change, I discussed this with Hercule while we were in the queue for the gents, and we agreed it was to keep the drunken heckling down to a minimum. We then briefly discussed toilet plumbing when he vacated the lavatory. I think I made quite an impression on him.
The meal was lovely, and the wine was flowing; Lara was very well behaved, Olga was doing a stirling job, as usual, of feeding her at just the right times, and after a bit of a swing in the car seat, she dozed on and off for the rest of the evening, and was passed around a bit between some of the cluckier guests from time to time when she was awake.
Becca came to our rescue when it came time to head back to the hotel, I'd put us in a premier inn at the services on the M3, in the hope that you could get from the minor road that runs alongside the services into the services themselves, but rather annoyingly there was a big fence in the way (I'd spotted it when we arrived at lunchtime). This meant we'd be faced with an expensive taxi journey up the M3, past the services, and back down the southbound carriageway to get to the hotel, but Becca was driving and gave us a lift. The cars were parked a hundred yards or so from the house in a paddock, but those 100 yards weren't lit, and it was a spooky walk by Olga & Becca's accounts.
It was raining heavily on Sunday morning (it struck us Mim & Ed were lucky with the weather on Saturday and we were really pleased for them on that front) which poo-pooed my idea of climbing the perimter fence and walking down the minor road to Martry Worthy to get the car, so we caved in and got a taxi. We were home by 1.15, and with the weather they way it was, I couldn't mow the lawns as I'd intended (awwww, shame) so it was a nice lazy afternoon of TV and dozing for me & Lara. Olga seemed to miss out on the dozing part, for some reason.
The photos from Saturday are up there on the left of the blog.
