You can never tell whether a wedding is going to be any good before you go, but we were lucky enough to get a great one. A short, joyful, ceremony (with no God, fire or brimstone); spectacular food; lots to drink and enjoyable company. In the UK there’s a saying I would normally have endorsed: “a good funeral is better than a bad wedding.” But I think this derives from the fact that British weddings suck quite badly: too long, dull, loads of hanging about, cash bar etc etc. The weddings I’ve been to over here have all been better, mainly because they’re shorter and more coherent. You turn up and get whisked from ceremony, to “cocktails”, to dinner, to dance and then home-time, full of good memories. And the drinks are free! UK weddings are very different. You arrive at midday and hang around at the church and then sit through a dull, long ceremony. Then you go outside and hang around a load more while they take pictures. After a couple of hours you drive to the reception and hang around while you buy drinks. Then you all sit down for lunch and eat some poorly catered food while you try to stay awake through the speeches. If you don’t like the crap wine supplied you are free to go and buy some other drink from the poorly-stocked bar. After dinner you go and hang around for another couple of hours and wait for the reception to start, and drink even more. From there on in it’s pretty similar to the US equivalent only you’re more drunk, tired and poor.

Michele’s mum has a new tomtom satnav box and we’ve been playing with it. Michele and I recorded our own voice sets for it and so her mum can have either of us guiding her from place to place. It’s quite ironic to hear Michele explaining how to get from place to place considering she would normally have difficulty finding her arse with a torch… But we think there may be money to be made in creating voice sets for people. Everyone seems to love the idea of having a family member reading their tomtom directions. If Mike can get Franklin (his parrot) trained up, I’d buy a tomtom even though we don’t have a car.