We are going to another wedding next month. I am looking forward to this, firstly because it should be a very happy occasion, secondly because it provides another opportunity for me to wear the hat, and finally because it is in West Sussex, too far to drive there and back in a day, and so I get to spend a night in a luxury hotel. This is because the wedding is being held in the hotel, and by the time we'd booked into a middle market alternative and organised a taxi to take us there and collect us afterwards, we might as well just go for it and stay at the venue. And some of our friends are staying there. And as we are driving down on the morning of the ceremony we could be tight for time trying to check in somewhere else first.
I suddenly remembered that we needed to get them a present. They are very organised, and have a List at John Lewis, but the last time I looked at the details I discovered that the List had not yet opened for shopping. The Systems Administrator and I did not have a list. Twenty eight years later we are still boiling pasta in the striped enamel pan from Habitat that someone gave us, though it is a bit chipped now, and cooking from Jane Grigson's Book of Vegetables, though you have to be a little careful with that because some of the pages are coming loose, but the home brewing kit that someone else chose for us never produced anything drinkable, and several house moves later none of the parts survive. It is probably a good idea to have a list, if you actually need stuff for your house, and don't trust your friends and family's ideas of what items would be either useful or beautiful.
I gave the card with the number of the List on it to the Systems Administrator, who logged in, and announced after a while that the happy couple wanted a waste paper basket, and a radiator. I would not have thought of giving anybody a radiator as a wedding present, but if you happened to need one you might be very pleased to receive it, which goes to show how useful lists can be. The SA opted for the last pair out of an original request for three sets of Waterford goblets, which brings them up to a full set of six, and seems preferable to them receiving two of this and four of that.
I had a look at the list, feeling slightly voyeuristic to see somebody else's ambitions for their home laid bare to public scrutiny. They would like a tablecloth, which is good. I'm all in favour of tablecloths. Also baking beans, measuring cups, a cooling rack, chopsticks and a TV. The TV is one for the parents or a rich uncle, I fancy. They would like a toilet brush. Even though it is their day, and they should have what they want, I'm not sure that a loo brush is the best wedding present material. A pizza wheel. Can't argue with that. Happy domestic nights in together with pizza and the Sopranos, of such is married life made.
Trying to remember what we have bought for our house recently, it would probably appear similarly mundane and eclectic. Two albums of bagpipe music. A two pint jug from the museums catalogue. Three tupperware boxes, one with a complicated snap lid. An experimental reading light from B&Q, since one of ours has broken and the strange conventions of the throwaway society mean that a whole new light costs the same as a new halogen light bulb, without any of the risks of buying a bulb that doesn't fit your existing light. We need brighter lights to read by nowadays, but the new one can't live where the SA thought it might, since as well as shining on the SA's book it shines across the room and directly into my eyes. An ice cream machine. Yes, I should say that we were still living in wedding list land.
Addendum The SA had a look at the website of the Northumberland Gazette, based in Alnwick, to try and find out more about the floods up there, but the headline news story was that a fence in Alnwick had been vandalised.
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