Third wedding of the year...

I've been to an old schoolfriend's wedding this weekend. I think she must hate everyone because it was in a very out of the way, hard to get to place. Or maybe she's giving gentle hints that it's really time for me to buy a car.

The wedding was just outside Hawes, a nice enough little village if you can actually get to it. The nearest train station is however 6 miles away in Garsdale - a small place notable mainly for its complete lack of anything useful like pubs, shops, taxis, sunshine or mobile phone reception. Luckily I'd been organised enough to pre-book a taxi otherwise I'd have been pretty stuck. I'd possibly still have been there now, so a big thank you to Steve the Taxi who was ferried (taxied?) us around all weekend.

Boy it was wet. Not great wedding weather - arguably though if you're going to get married in November in the Yorkshire Dales you have to plan for a degree of rain. It did at least stop for a little while before dinner to allow some fireworks to be set off from a nearby farmer's field. The hotel itself, Simonstone Hall, wouldn't allow fireworks to be set off within the grounds - presumably for health and safety reasons. They were quite happy to allow two sixty year old men to climb into a wet and muddy field in the pitch dark to play with explosives though. That was fine. No safety issues there.

The wedding was good - plenty of food, wine (standard and mulled) and whisky. And cigars (which weren't even my idea for once!) too.

And here are the happy couple, all married. Or possibly not quite married yet. I'm not sure where the registrar has gone...



The groom is a young actor (he was on TV recently in Love Soup. I didn't see it) and some of his friends were actors too. This meant that I had to be extra careful when people asked me what I did for a living and make sure that I pronounced actuary clearly so that people didn't think I was an actor by mistake. Most people there seemed to have jobs beginning with A. Actors, actuaries, accountants, archivists. I don't think there were any ambulance drivers there but I can't completely rule this out because I didn't speak to everyone.

Best thing... the name tags on the dinner tables were little gingerbread men with our names iced on!