Donna & Mossy's Wedding or, How I Managed to Make an Idiot of Myself While in a Lovely Dress

Donna looks on nervously as Lucy annunciates "lovers" for the fiftieth time in a one minute speech

I think, I think, I need to explain stuff here. About, hell, eight months ago, at one of our very frequent bridal party conferences (read: nights spent drinking excessively), Donna hiccoughed in between vodka shots: "Weeeell, I don't like this shit about all the men standing up and speaking at weddings. I'm not having that at my wedding. I'm going to make a short speech. And I'd really really like it if one of ye did too."

Being the hardlined feminazi that I am, I stood up and thumped the table, punched a wall and bellowed: HELLS YEAH! Only to realise immediately that I was the only one behaving thusly and the other two bridesmaids were blinking rapidly and feigning intense interest in their beermats. Fueled by intense female pride and agreement with this position on weddings and possibly also by the amount of wine I had consumed that evening, I said "Yes, Donna. I will do a speech. It will be amazing. It will be like Cameron Diaz in that movie where she is the worst sister ever and reads a poem at her sister's wedding at the end except less crappy. I may cry."

I'll save you the long story and give you the dets: on the day, I tanked. Seriously. As soon as Ronan, Mossy's brother and best man, introduced me, the whole wedding responded in a series of cheers and catcalls and whoops that could only be faithfully answered by a striptease and/or a vitriolic political diatribe, neither of which I was prepared to give, nor, I suspect, would have been welcome in the circumstances. This was due in no small part to my reputation amongst the wedding party as a seasoned idiot. Instead, I bumbled through the first three lines of my prepared "speech" (not prepared enough, watchers noted) until my garbled brain happened upon one of my "money lines"*, one of the "burn points"** essentially:

Donna and Mossy were friends first, friends always and now friends,
partners and lovers forever.

Okay. So, it wasn't hot shit. It was thrown together five hours previously inbetween my hair and makeup being done. Anyway, it has slight rhetorical resonance and I wasn't hugely ashamed of it. Until Donna's lovely husband, Mossy, piped up just after I said "partners-" with the word "LOVERS! BHAHAHAHAHA!"

The whole place wet itself. Now was not the time to explain that actually, yes, that's what I was about to say. So I did what any reasonably shy person does when finds themselves in a joke they didn't get in on at the top: I recognised the money-maker and I rode it like the donkey that it was.

I'm not proud of this. I said about five more sentences with the word 'lovers' in, purposefully, and even paused for a beat and waited for the audience to say it with me on one line. The place was in fits of ridiculous giggles and I was a dirty, dirty bridesmaid who can't speak for longer than fifteen seconds without drawing attention away from the bride and groom towards herself. I sat down, amid applause and shame and didn't look Donna in the eye for two hours, when I felt she was sufficently tipsy to not punch me.

So, yeah. Public speaking = not for me. Ditto bridesmaiding.

* & ** These are the euphemisms I employ to make me feel my writing has effect. I am frequently seen to be squealing "Yeah, fucking money line right there Luce!" when in fact I am writing shite. Now you know the truth.

You are wrong, I am right: My stock response to other people

The twins come from a eleven-person household, and grew up in a house equipped with two bathrooms, and unfortunately situated in what even rural Waterfordians call 'Injun country': The outer limits of Fenor. It stands to reason that they fear catastrophic events more than the cushty townie that they now share a home with. 'What the fuck are you doing?' I asked from my Sunday evening nest of newspapers, toast rinds and blankets.

'DUH. Filling the bath with water in case of a blackout from the hurricane, stupid.' They chorused back. It took my thirty whole seconds to juggle around possible uses for a bathful of water during a hurricane. Sudden personal filth that required immediate washing? Re-homing of ducks from the boating lake?

'Well, what for, though?'
'DUH! To flush the toilet when the power goes! Are you naturally this dense or do you work at it?'
'It's as automatic to me as breathing,' I mumbled, my stock response whenever I am paid a compliment. Actually, I was concentrating very hard on figuring out a) why this could possibly be an issue at 11pm at night b) why I had never thought to wonder what powered toilets flushing and c) how to prove both twins wrong without having to leave my couch.
'You are wrong, you are terribly, terribly wrong. Firstly, I cannot recall ever losing power in my home for longer than three hours and sec- actually, lastly- I cannot ever remember a toilet not flushing. In conclusion, you are both wrong, good night.'

This perplexed them both, as instead of retiring to my bedroom upon saying goodnight, I put a newspaper over my face and feigned loud whistling snores. This is my stock response to any bewildering confrontation. They finished filling the bath, filled some 2l bottles of drinking water and went to bed. They'd have been exemplary during the Blitz, I don't doubt.

This morning, after the twins had gone to work, I stood in the bathroom and chuckled at the placid sunlight winking calmly off the water in the bathtub. 'Oh, foolish, cautious twins. How you delight! How much I must teach you of living in modern civilisation! I shall enjoy remarking on your premature bathtub filling with condescension and wit!'

Then I walked into the kitchen and realised that I had left the fridge door open for a hour, had left the empty coffee pot scalding on a hot plate and forgotten to put detergent in the washing machine.

There is no limit to the petty and unamusing ironies of my days.

Now that's unusual

I watched A League of Their Own last night and cried five times. I know it was five times because I noted each time I felt tears welling up, right before punching myself in the head for being such a fairy. In other news, I called up to my mother's house to borrow an alarm clock yesterday evening and something stupid she said made me laugh for two minutes solid. I laughed so hard that I had to lay on the floor to balast my shaking shoulders and my sister ran upstairs to find out what in God's name was so funny. I told her, chokingly, and she looked at me in annoyance and disgust: that isn't even funny, Lucy.

Alls I'm saying is that maybe my usually hypercritical filtering system is off it's game. Maybe A League of Their Own is not the superb paean to feminism, female solidarty, self-belief and personal redemption I took it for.