Someone said to me recently that maybe my standards are too high with who I want to marry. Maybe I should lower them. I think that they said that shows that both they and I have very different ideas of what getting married means. For me, marriage is a one shot goal, with someone who I want to spend the rest of my life with. For them, it is a means to an end. Being alone is far worse than being in a marriage with someone you tolerate.

I hate that I am only defined by my lack of companionship. I hate that it bothers me as much as it does. Sure I want to find someone and settle down and all that crap, but if I get to 50 years old, and I have done everything else in my life, I won’t see it as a failure that I didn’t get married. The problem arises is that every one else would see me as that. Are they right to? Maybe, I don’t know.

I went to a wedding this weekend in Blackpool for one of my best friends. Now I don’t want to get overly sentimental, but it was lovely seeing someone I grew up with getting married. It has been great every time, but this one especially so. My friend’s family have been through a lot in the last 5 years, losing very important and close members of their family. That is life, and his speech was wonderfully moving. Not over sentimental, but one filled with hope and love. It was when I realise how much he cared for his partner, that I realised what I was missing. It was that one person, who superseded everyone else. The person you would sacrifice everything for.

Another thing about the wedding I enjoyed was to be able to celebrate with some of my closest, and oldest friends. We rarely get together, all of us, as much as we used to. That is understandable, we are all grown ups, with our own lives, but it was nice to see them. Their idiosyncrasies get diluted, and yet more concentrated, when all together. We all inhabit such specific roles for one another, and to get together, and drink our body weight in wine and rum is always something to savour.

A few points however, Blackpool for starters, is an absolute dump! Someone told me that recently they had pumped millions into regeneration. You could have fooled me ! If they have done that, someone is sat on a non extradition Caribbean island, sipping a Rum Punch and laughing at his crime of the greatest embezzlement ever. I had the song Every Day is like Sunday by Morrisey in my head on loop as we walked around.

This is the coastal town, that they forgot to shut down…

Maybe it was just because it was out of season, but there was a decided air of resignation and benefits fraud about the place. To be fair, most of the people we met were actually lovely. Really nice, it is they just all looked like people I would cross the street to avoid for fear of a race crime. On the Saturday night we went for a curry, after which the others went for drinks at the Walkabout. I on the other hand went home, because I have seen Booze Britain thanks! I was later proved right by the descriptions people told me about the places they went, and the things they saw. Things they couldn’t un-see!

Weirdly, as if sensing some sort of opportunity to make me feel slightly glummer than I was on the way home, a girl who I had been communicating with on eHarmony chose that time to tell me she had met someone else, and wanted to see how that panned out, but if not she’d let us know. I love being a safety net, I don’t know about you?

Anyway, who cares about the maudlin bits of this, I just want to say the wedding was great fun, not just because of the event, but the people we shared it with, the brilliant band, good food, and the fact that it was in an old 1920s casino that made us all feel like we were in an episode of Poirot.

Oh and I haven’t event touched on David Apfel, trained opera singer, who can do traditional folk songs for 6 different races (including Irish), and whose eye brow mobility and lung capacity is only matched by his range of accents and ability to mimic a telephone. Needless to say, if you are having any event, this is the guy for you. 

Mazel Tov Alex and Riva Winehouse

- Anand

PS: for David Apfel bookings: http://www.davidapfel.com/