A Village Wedding

Right, after two weeks I am finally calm and unemotional enough to tell you about my little sister's wedding without giving you endless pages of "IT WAS SOOO LUUUURRRVVVEEELLLYYY!!!" and metaphorically snottering all over the page. Well, almost. It was though, really, really LOVELY! There, I've got it out of my system. Promise.

The wedding itself was held in a church in the surprisingly beautiful Walthamstow Village, and the reception in a hall conveniently located five minutes walk around the corner. It just goes to show that you can find picturesque loveliness for your wedding even if you're in the middle of London.

The pew ends - which I stupidly didn't photograph, too busy juggling bouquet and sodden handkerchief - were made by my clever mother. She hand-made little hessian bags, which she filled with oasis, gyp and ferns, then hung over the pew ends. Simple and beautiful. Bridesmaid's bouquets were made by yours truly; for the whole painful and sweary business see my earlier blog rant.
The bride, my beautiful little sister Eleanor, wore a vintage seventies dress from Ebay. She was supposed to be wearing my mother's wedding dress but it disastrously fell apart in the hands of an evil dry-cleaner; however I'm sure you'll agree that the replacement dress is classically gorgeous. Make up and hair by my beautiful cousin Jackie. Thank heavens she was there, as the rest of us didn't know one end of an eyebrow pencil from the other, and almost fainted at the idea of back-combing!

I have no idea who made Vincent's suit, as he wouldn't tell me on the grounds that men shouldn't talk about clothes.

The hall was decorated, using fresh green apples, gerberas, basketfuls of ivy, and endless energy, by the amazing visionary that is Ange Jacobs. The mouthwatering food and buckets full of booze were supplied and managed by John, Emperor of Southwark and owner of the Royal Oak pub in Tabard street, and his splendid team. And the stunning cake - those roses are made of icing, can you believe it - by my aunt Jane. Her sigh of relief as she finally placed it on the stand after a two hour car journey with two hyperactive children, blew out several candles. I then effectively ruined the beautiful effect by adding my comedy handmade cake toppers, but kind lady that she is, she pretended not to mind.

Favours were a combination of adorable personalised Love Hearts, and slightly crumbly peppermint creams, made by me in a panicky sandstorm of icing sugar.

A fantastic jazz band and wonderful DJ ("Do you want loadsa chat, some chat, or minimal chat?" "No chat please Harry.") set the pace for what was genuinely one of the best parties I've ever been to. Everybody looked wonderful, everybody was happy, and everybody had a great night. What more can you ask from a wedding? My congratulations to my amazing sister Ellie who made it all happen, and to her new husband. To Mr and Mrs Rason.

Texting - :) or :(

As the news breaks that texting is now our national preferred form of communication (Shock! Gasp! Amazeballs!), the “experts” have crawled out of the woodwork to denounce texting as the reason why the youth of our great nation are incapable of communicating face to face.

They have watched teenagers on buses, fingers flying with almost supernatural speed across a keyboard of letters so small that we can barely see them, even with our reading glasses on, and they have felt the fear. The fear of the unknown. The fear of something they cannot understand. The fear that people younger than them can do something better than they can (surely anyone younger than me should still be building sandcastles?). And so, a national outcry – outbleat – begins.

There are many problems with this theory. For a start, teenagers can communicate – at least with each other. Try to get to sleep before midnight during the summer holidays in a flat above a SPAR shop and you will no longer doubt their communication abilities – you will be praying for silence. Fact – teenage girls, regardless of education or social background talk non-stop, and at full volume. Just because we do not understand the language, that does not make it any less valid. They text each other when they are not together, very sensibly saving themselves the extortionate cost of making a mobile phone call, but that does not mean they do not talk when they are together. I remember when I was a teenager – oh so many moons ago – I could spend the entire day in the company of a girlfriend, then when I got home I would instantly find I had still more to say to her and jump on the phone, much to the horror of my parents and the ruination of their finances.

I think what experts mean is that the “yoof” cannot communicate with them, the grownups. Very possibly they are confusing ‘cannot’ with ‘will not’. Or have they considered the possibility that the situation is the other way round; they are the ones having trouble communicating with the young people?  Just think of the televised interviews you have seen involving a paranoid looking politician or over eager presenter trying desperately to elicit information from a grumpy, bored looking adolescent in a hood. Excruciating, no? But in almost every case it was the politician or presenter who appeared wrong-footed, and not the disenfranchised, swoosh-covered interviewee.

Okay, I admit that there are some extreme cases. Regular articles appear in the press with quotations from despairing business owners, unable to fill a position and considering suicide after a series of interviews with monosyllabic, mumbling carpet gazers. However this is not a new problem, and to blame it on our “text culture” is a stretch, and somewhat naïve.

Surely the real culprit has been uncovered by the other study results to come out this week; Problem Families. The conclusions of that report make for unsettling reading. In families where violence, sexual abuse and abandonment are commonplace, eloquence is not a priority. In families where nobody speaks to each other but only shouts, where rational discussion is unheard of and children are largely ignored, how on earth can we expect the youth of these families to communicate with strangers? And what would we expect them to communicate, if they could? It is tempting to blame the schools, but teachers with large classes to teach and control can only achieve so much. A parent who reads to their child, who talks to them intelligently, who discusses issues and ideas with them, is setting their child up for the future far better than an overworked, stressed teacher ever could.

Texting is an effective, and ever more prevalent method of communication. But to blame it for the inability of young people to communicate face-to-face? Ridiculous. Or, in text-speak: R U AVIN A :D?