There’s Always One!

What is in a ‘Snowball’?

A story based on Bridesmaids & Weddings

-        It is not as dull as it sounds! -

Chapter 2…

There is always one!

I have been an actual bridesmaid five times in my life as well as playing many other ‘bit parts’ along the way! There was always a wedding going on when I was younger, huge great events with all the pomp and ceremony thrown in! My mother is the eldest and only girl of six children and my father - Trevor is one of seven his place in his brood was number four. So there was always the possibility of a wedding amongst the family and failing that, you could always rely on the extended family friends to supply the nuptials! We were never short of a wedding to attend!

Weddings are weird events if you think about it, all rational thinking goes out the window. Sometimes, quite often really, you find yourself at a wedding, that really is not a good fit in terms that you have attended the wedding because of a family connection even though you have no real ‘connection’ with the people that are getting married, or because of past connections with a person and a past life that has since faded, but you still feel that you should go to the wedding for old time sake.

I am always surprised by the way people dress at these occasions, don’t get me wrong – You will be hard pushed to find someone that loves an outfit, as much as I do, I totally have a connection with my mother there, it is in my DNA! – At a wedding you see all sorts of outfits, worn by the key players that on most occasions they would not be seen dead in and the style is mostly based on another period in history. Some of the wedding dresses are criminal hideous, not only in their excessive cost but in their ludicrous designs. At one wedding I attended the bride was told by her super religious mother that she could not wear white as she had been living with her husband to be, it was in the late 1980’s! So the down trodden bride walked down the aisle in a blancmange style purple silk dress with ‘off-white’ trims more sepia if I am honest. When we got to the reception afterward, her husband was clearly so amused and or bemused by her ‘look’, which had been made worse by the uncharacteristic makeup style that was caked on her slim face; he changed his speech and devoted it to his new wife’s, ‘new look’ – he brutally mocked her outfit and her ‘polyfilla’ face, commenting that if he had not heard her voice he would not have a clue who he had just married – as she more resembled Co-Co the clown! This horrendously ‘naff’ commentary brought on huge laughter from his mates and stony glances from most of the women present, including myself. The laughter only encouraged ‘Turbo Pete’ the groom, who had been for the last 3 hours staggering around Bray, Berkshire with his entourage of mates consuming vast amounts of alcohol, in fact we had seen him in The Crown about 40 minutes before he was due to get married – I was quite impressed that he even made it down the aisle at all! Unfortunately the sniggering and laughter from his mates only spurred Turbo Pete on, embarrassing his new wife further, he made the most unwise comment, particularly considering the occasion, telling us he didn’t care about what the bride looked like it was not her face he was interested in! Except his words were not as delicately chosen!  - The bride burst into tears, obviously not seeing the funny side – as there wasn’t one. And her mother stood up and gave a fulsome list of all the husbands’ downfalls and failings and why he wasn’t good enough for her daughter anyway! Not the best of starts and all of this gave the reception a bit of a downer – as you might imagine!

In the mid 1990’s my boyfriend, my parents and I were all invited as a guests to the wedding of the sister of a childhood school friend of mine. So there was a sort of connection there. A super slick, super posh and super stylish event in a small ‘midsummer murder’ style village in the heart land of Oxfordshire, this wedding in effect was a re-run, of my childhood friend’s wedding which had taken place a few years earlier. The mother of the bride was the doyenne of the local social society, her husband was in the film industry and therefore there was a few ‘bob’ sloshing around to pay for this tasteful wedding feast.

My parents were invited to this wedding because they got to know this family because of me. They have the unique irritating habit of almost always adopting my friends or networking with my boyfriends or my friend’s parents. I introduce friends to my mother and father and before I know it I return home to find my friend/boyfriend and/or their parents happily ensconced in my family house usually carrying out a job for my father Trevor at the family home Dutch Gardens or Trevor would employ them in his business, they just adopted my friendship group one way or another. I would find a boyfriend then in the case of my mother, they would be found hanging on her every word whilst in the kitchen sipping wine with her! I found it extremely irritating! When I had a boyfriend that was a twin. Within weeks of my new relationship with this young man I found his twin brother Mark working at Dutch Gardens as one of the permanent gardeners? This was intensely annoying as Mark used his job at the house to spy on me so he could tell his brother what I was doing at any time of the day, which caused no end of arguments between his brother and I. On another occasion Trevor was delighted to find out that I had a new boyfriend who was studding to be a gas heating technician. At the time Trevor had an interest in the large gas fire installed at the local Holiday Inn, near Heathrow and had decided to install one at Dutch Gardens. A fire was purchased all it needed now was a gas technician to install it. And by chance I was going out with one! My boyfriend was still very much in the early stages of his studies, this was not a problem for Trevor, my boyfriend install this huge fire into the fireplace in our lounge. The lounge area had three different sets of doors going off into other rooms in the house and had what my parents called a minstrels gallery high up in the roof space which lead off to my parent’s room. So it was thankfully a very well ventilated room. 

Said boyfriend installed the fire under Trevor’s instructions, as ever Trevor changed the configuration of how the fire was supposed to work, moving the fire closer to the front of the fireplace, which was not recommended and changing the start the ignition button which was put at the back of the fire, it was supposed to be at the front for easy and safe ignition. This meant that when you lit the fire, you had to keep you finger on the button for a set amount of time for the fire to ignite, you had to make sure you were not wearing any clothes in case they caught fire as your arm was dangling over the flames, I have no hair on my arms but it used to ignite my brothers hair if he did not pull his hand away quick enough! Nothing was ever simple at Dutch Gardens! After the fire was fitted, for the next few years, my friends and I, my parents and their friends all developed dreadful headaches and nausea whenever the fire was on –  Obviously we all blamed the fire - but Trevor would not have any of it. Needless to say the installation had not been checked by a qualified gas installer which meant the draw on the fire was not sufficient to pull all the toxic fumes up the chimney and we were all suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning. It is a wonder that we all survived for so long – Just another day at Dutch Gardens!

Going back to the wedding, my mother, particularly had made friends with the wife of this family and over the years as we children grew up, we had been on holiday with them as a family and they shared many events with us. My mother adored everything her friend did, she was a great entertainer and had a good sense of interior style which appealed to my mother. I never quite fitted in, but as happens when you are young, I was billeted off for stay overs and other events at this house, but as adults my friend and I had mostly gone our separate ways but retained a very convivial long distance friendship. I was now viewed by her mother the mother of the bride at this wedding as more than a little wayward! To be fair I did have my moments and I was a little wild! Strangely enough they always thought they were a little cut above the Wynne-Jones, my family, particularly my father, the mother loved to give me her opinions about my family and they were really quite bitchy at times, some of her observations were possible quite true, but it is never easy as a child listening to someone criticizing your parents.  Trevor, was an extremely successful self-made man, yes a total eccentric, a maverick with a utterly ruthless megalomaniac edge with very few scruples unless it fitted the demographic of how he was going to make his next million. Apart from that he was obviously just a normal man – not! Trevor did whatever he liked in life with little regard to anyone else and spent his money lavishly on his lifestyle, most particularly his property – Dutch Gardens, which he has spent a lifetime building and designing then re-building and designing spending vast fortunes, he was ably supported by my mother who was a willingly participant on spending on all things lifestyle particularly clothes. They were the new bourgeoisie. This meant that they were good gossip value! As it happened the mother of the bride husband had made all his initial money from directing porn films. Once when I was staying at the house, there were a bunch of grown-up’s sitting at the breakfast bar one the evening drinking and laughing. We were playing and we ran through the room on our way to another room, we were stopped and introduced to the various guests, one of them was Linda Lovelace star of a film called Deep Throat, I said hello and we continued on our way through the room. It was then that my friend told me that Lovelace was an actress who appeared in sexy films. This made a huge impression on me, not because she was in sexy films, I could not have given a damn about that, but she was an actress everything that I wanted to be! Little did I know at the time! 

Despite my very complex relationship with Trevor, I have to admit I did admire on occasions his straightforward attitude toward this family, he could see that the mother of the bride had social pretentions as they found him socially inferior. Trevor would bait her from time to time. To my great amusement when I was about twelve years old and we were at one of their gatherings, my friend’s mother was holding court, as usual shouting at the top of her voice to the minions who were listening; “If I were Princess Anne… I would be a real … Bitch.”  There was general amusement and agreement around the room and much nodding at one another. Then came Trevor’s voice from the back of the room, “You don’t need to be Princess Anne to be that!” My mother was mortified … I was rather impressed….   

The Wedding ceremony that we had attended was to take place in a beautiful small church on the green on a beautiful sunny day, my boyfriend and I were standing on the lawn outside the church, waiting for the wedding to get underway, just watching all the guests laughing and chatting, pretty young people who had attended the right universities, knew each other since childhood and wore the right clothes for this type of wedding, all super at ease with this type of event – think … Hugh Grant and ‘Four Weddings’. In some ways it dawned on me how far I was away from this crowd and how I had only been associated with it by a happy accident of a childhood friendship.

Standing there like a couple of lemons, me nodding at the one or two people that I recognised, whilst my boyfriend remained in the main politely hostile to the occasion on all fronts. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw Trevor marching towards us, flustered as ever, this was never a great sign, but on the other hand quite a reassuring normal one. Looking beyond Trevor there was my mother picking her way carefully on her high heels across the uneven thick grassland, curiously they had arrived together, they had in fact separated some years earlier, but to my ever increasing annoyance they could never seem to leave each other alone when it came to social occasions or any occasions really – which usually meant a scene of some description or other mostly in spectacular style – I don’t like being with them together – it’s a dangerous place to be. Trevor caught up with us,  I turned my attention back to the wedding crowd I could see that we were now all beginning lined up into a que ready to enter the quaint little church to take our seats before the wedding started.

“Your mother has been doing the tour of everyone, Natalie, in the car park, she thinks she’s the bloody bride’s mother!” We glanced around in my mother’s direction and true enough she had arrived in the main throng of some guests and was working the crowd like a ‘pro’, air-kissing and shaking people’s hands and making topical conversation. There is no one that can dress for the part like my mother – no one. Today an amazing off-white streamlined tailored outfit, with small shoulder pads than usual, my mother loves a shoulder pad. Her beautiful figure showing off the couture costume to its best effect with buttons down the front, nipped in at her small waist by a matching belt, the hem being thigh length with a lace decoration around the edge, finished off with fingerless lace gloves, and despite the heat she had tights on. Well actually, they are more lightly to be stockings and suspenders, she was going through another phase of being ultra-sexy, particularly in the wake of her separation with Trevor. This obviously would wind Trevor up, as she would behave like a terrible flirt in front of him which could send him off the deep end in certain situations. I know how it pans out at these type of events. He will have collected her from her home and as she got into his car the hem of her skirt would ‘accidentally’ rise up a little too high reviling the top of a stocking and her naked thigh. I never really got the sex thing with my mother, she was like her mother to some extent ‘sex’ did not exist and nothing rude or overt on the matter could be said around her – yet put my mother in a social scene with men there, of any age really, 8 to 80, it did not really matter and then she turned into a vixen. She knew that she was the attraction in the room and that all eyes would be on her.

I once asked her after hearing a great deal of conversation at school about sex, how it happened? It was quite an innocent question as I was only about ten at the time. We were in my parents’ bedroom, upstairs. She had her back to me when I asked her and I knew that I had asked a difficult question because her shoulders stiffened and she stopped for a second what she was doing. There was no sitting down with me and telling me some ‘birds and bee’s’ story, she continued from her bedroom into her dressing room, so she was just out of sight but I could still clearly hear her. ‘It is when a man put’s his willy up a ladies bottom.’ I was utterly disgusted, no ….. Mortified and repulsed. She offered me no further explanation, she continued doing whatever it was that she was doing in her dressing room and I left her bedroom to retreat back into my own bedroom in utter revulsion – it was most probably the most repulsive thing that I had ever heard or could possibly imagine, I certainly looked at my father and my uncles that had children in a very different light after discovering this piece of information, I could only believe that there was indeed something very wrong with them indeed! Clearly all perverts! My mother never offered any other information on the subject of sex to me, the conversation, such as it was, was never mentioned again. So I then had to glean any further information on the subject from spotty teenage girls in my class at school like Debbie Cook who seemed to know a great deal on the subject and was only too happy to impart it, though her explanations on the subject were somewhat less grotesque, they involved a lot of mouth to mouth resuscitation according to her called ‘French Kissing’, the very idea of doing this with any boys I knew I found equally repulsive -  I vowed from a very young age that no matter what – sex was not something I was going to indulge in!    

Trevor joined us in the que to get into the church. My mother was still spinning on her nude sling back shoes in her social conversations with various guests. Occasionally she touched the rim of her statement two tone straw hat with an off white brim the crown being in a dark caramel colour which was draped with a scarf to look like a veil. You could not miss her she looked stunning! Imagine Crystal Carrington from the 1980’s Dynasty TV program;  in reality, it could actually be one of Crystal Carrington’s outfits, my mother had been at the auction of the clothes and had purchased a number of items warn by both the leading ladies, Crystal and the iconic Joan Collins.  

Getting closer to doorway of the church Trevor beckoned to my mother to come and join us in the que, she totally saw us, but ignored us and continued with her mother of the bride duties! So we entered the church leaving her outside in the sun and in her element, Trevor was gritting his teeth and muttering about her behaviour. We squeezed through the door and shuffled into the small churches pews allocated to us, people were chatting and waving at each other, some people acknowledging Trevor with thumbs up and mouthing ‘you okay?’ We all shunted down the pew to give the guests more room at the other end, Trevor trying to hold a bit of space for my mother to sit on once she arrived. The ushers charged about trying to organise everyone, a women at the front of the church by the font started singing a very jolly song, and the general hub-bub started to quieten and people now started to turn their attention to the order of the service.

“For Christ sake, what is she doing, where is your mother, Natalie?” Trevor hissed into my ear loudly. Looking around the bride’s family were now filing into the church, smiling and waving at the selected guests, followed in by the ‘actual’ mother of the bride, who looked lovely, but was acting less like the mother of the bride than my mother! The family took their seats three rows in front of us at the top of the church, as the mother of the bride sat down she turned around and ‘mouthed’ to Trevor – ‘where is Josephine?’ Trevor put his hands up to either side of his face and shrugged going red. The singing started in earnest and I turned to watch the back of the church toward the door. Finally, my mother was in sight, stopping at the door to talk to someone. Then she started her slow decent toward her seat, stopping at relevant intervals to wave and chat with people. I tuned to see the mother of the bride eyes following my mother as she posed her way toward us, she was not amused, but to be fair to her was resigned to my mother’s behaviour. My mother was going to make the most of her moment, she was in auditions for my wedding after all! When she had reached the end of our pew, the seated guests had to stand and shuffle back into the pew to make room for her to pass, at which point the ‘here comes the bride’ music began to play, the entire congregation turned back to look at the church door where the bride and her father had entered the building. Trevor was a mixture of embarrassment and rage!

After what was a very sweet wedding service we all made our way out of the church into the summer sunshine and walked in clutches of people away from the church and down the drive to their house, as the photographers, one taking pictures and one filming, both scurried amongst the crowd. – We approached  the rambling family house where the vast marquee was set up on the lawn for the wedding reception. The house screamed quintessential English country house with all the windows of the property looking out at the wedding, with fabulous sprawling roses and climbers picture framing each window. As the guests assembled at the back of the house, you could hear the gravel crunching under people’s shoes, which reminded me of my childhood running around barefoot at this charming old house and the pain of walking from the lawn to the house across the gravel chips. Echoes of my past, I never really fitted in here, but I have good memories. The family had since converted the garage extension into a ‘granny’ flat that was attached to the house, they now referred to as ‘The West Wing’! And it was in the West Wing that all the catering was taking place, this was all very ‘Four Weddings & a Funeral’ …  

Drinks were served as we milled about on the gravel terrace, loud guffawing came from certain clutches of people. Beautiful young woman ran from one set of people to another screeching and laughing holding onto their hats as they ran, bags and scarves were tossed aside, this was a place that these young people were comfortable and familiar with, it was a very British scene. It was a sea of pastel coloured haute couture ‘Sloane ranger’ outfits and crinkled linen designer suits intermixed with floral yummy mummies in their pretty printed dresses and soft silk sling back shoes. I have never been one to run with the crowd, it’s not that at one stage in my life that I haven’t wanted to – I had. But it just was not my style. But it would be fair to say that I certainly stood out in a crowd! Dressed in velvet black platform shoes from Liberties, the rest of my outfit was purchased from Roz at Mango in Windsor, the same shop that I was later to buy my wedding outfit from. Today I was in the iconic black Helen Storey ankle length ‘swirling crinkle’ skirt, that moved in rhythm with your body, paired with a figure hugging black turtle neck body with black net sleeves, this ensemble was held together with a Helen Storey fitted black and red silk blazer. My dark brown hair was cut in a sleek lopsided bob topped with a black leather beret, drop chain earrings styled with a red enamel stones. Put it this way, you could not miss me amongst this crowd!

Easels had been erected all around the marquee at various entrances which advertised the seating plan for the guests. My boyfriend and I were at the table of brother of the bride and his wife, whom I also knew well, I can’t help thinking that we were the booby prize and that they had only agreed to sit with us out of the goodness of their hearts. We were the oddballs at this event! The marquee was ‘spot on’ beautifully designed elegance without being too ‘ott’ and the table settings were magnificent, no expense had been spared, the catering staff busied themselves serving the wine and food which just kept coming from the West Wing. As the day wore on speeches were made and many happy tears were shed. As always with these occasions, tensions and emotions are high, my boyfriend hated everything about it and decided at the first opportune moment that it was time for him to leave, which left me nursing many glasses of wine, feeling sorry for myself, ‘you always get one don’t you!’ And it was me!

Glancing around at the large table at the top of the marque where my parents were sitting, I could tell even from a distance that there was friction and irritation between them, this type of situation was perfect storm for a spat between them. They never really worried if they had an audience, sometimes I wonder if they preferred it? It usually ended in tears, my mother’s! On occasions there can be broken china and furniture sometimes the odd neighbour can be involved. There scenes can take many forms … Once at Dutch Gardens, our home, we were all having a lovely evening, a new green barbeque had been bought and family friends had been invited to the first use of the green machine. Mostly the evening was going well, but the usual picking at each other had started to enter the evening. Trevor picking at my mother’s love of dressing up, he had taken to calling her dresses – frock’s, which irritated her enormously. The other couple were doing their best at trying to head off the bickering between them, without much success – once my parents were off and running that was usually it! Feeling incensed at the next insensitive comment Trevor had made to her, my mother got up from the table on the terrace and went back into the kitchen presumably to get some more drinks, she reappeared with the enormous Victorian jelly that I had made from a new jelly mould that my mother had bought. It was so large that it required many packets of jelly to fill it and as such was a multi-coloured ‘splendour’. I was very much looking forward to presenting it to the guests later in the evening, it was to be served with strawberries which were being marinated in Pimm’s and were sitting in the fridge. Purposefully my mother walked across the terrace toward Trevor, she was holding the jelly with one hand underneath, waiter style and balancing the wobbly item with her other hand on the side of the plate. We all watch with interest as she marched toward Trevor, then to use one of his phrases ‘the penny dropped’ – Trevor jumped up holding one hand out toward her in a defensive style – ‘No Joey, No … Come off it now !! … Joey..‘ Whereupon she charged at him. The guests looked on open mouthed unsure of what was about to happen, Trevor moved quickly knocking the chair over just as the jelly launched into the air. One thing you should know if you ever decide to become a professional jelly thrower – is that the weight of it when it is this huge size means that it does not fly through the air as you would expect, it sort of goes up in the air - forward a little and then drops out of the air directly downwards, hitting the edge of the table and splattering large shards of jelly across the table toward the guests who instinctively pulled back in their chairs as it splattered towards them, the other half of the jelly having been given a bit of propelled motion by hitting the table splattered towards Trevor, it hit the floor and splattered up his legs and all over his shoes. ‘Good God Joey!’ My friends and I who were down the steps on the next level watched the performance with open mouths – I was scowling, I was really fed up that my jelly had been treated like this and if my mother was going to use it as a weapon the very least she could have done is had made it hit the target! My mother turned on her heal having picked up the now broken melamine plate that the jelly was on, with it she scooped up some of the jelly on the floor and returned to the kitchen. Minutes later she returned with the cut glass bowl that housed the marinating strawberries and a jug of thick double cream put them on the table. Picked up great chunks of the jelly that were glistening on the table and slopped and blobbed them in the middle of the table like a sort of Jelly Mountain. Walked over to her ‘hostess trolley’, which was not switched on but being used to house various cutlery and crockery and napkins, cleaned her hands and brought dessert plates and napkins back to the table and offered strawberries and cream to the stunned guests. Who quite appropriately accepted! That was the thing about Trevor and Josephine and being at Dutch Gardens, their behaviour was all part of the show. And people just acted accordingly.

Sitting at the wedding table all by myself now staring down at my black platform shoes, in my addled mind I had decided that it would be a good idea to make my way up to my parents table and rescue any situation between my parents that might arise! I had after all become quite accustom to this! Picking my way through the dancing party on a slight incline as the flooring had been laid directly on the grass I was suddenly grabbed from behind by one member of the bridal party, a man of a certain age who had equally like me drunk too much! I jigged around on the spot to the music with him trying to keep a distance between his ever encroaching arms, then the record changed to a slow song. All guests around us assumed the clinch position, reluctantly I was forced to do the same with this gentleman. It is quite horrid when you don’t want to be this close to someone, but feel you should so as not to make a scene.  As the song droned on his hand which originally started in the small of my back, moved ever lower and more insistent as he tried forcefully to pull my bottom towards his still gyrating groin, purposely bumped his crutch into me; for the record his thrusting movement was not even in time with the music! What else do you do? I am young and I don’t want to be impolite! So I try to dance with my bottom sticking out to stop him making contact with me, this unfortunately only seemed to encouraged him to use both hands on my bottom, his fingers splayed and sticking into my flesh, he was now fighting to control my movements and forcing me towards his thrusting genitals, I do wonder what it is about this type of man, it is like the more you resist the more they enjoy themselves? On what planet does he think that I have any interest in him? Now I was fighting to get free, but trying not to make a show of what was going on … The ghastly record continued as his salivating mouth was making its way towards my face, turning my head as quickly as possible his sloppy lips collided with my ear, I was so revolted that my ‘gut’ reaction was to push him away, thankfully he released me and staggered backward into the dancing crowd, which caught him before he fell the revellers ‘yelling’ approval and he disappeared into the dancing guests.

Wiping my ear and face in utter revulsion then rubbing my wet hand down my crinkle skirt, I continued on my way through the guests to my parents table the wine was hitting me now. At the large table of guest where my parents were sitting. I was greeted with a smile from Trevor, who beckoned me to an empty seat next to him, I manoeuvred my way around the other guests holding on to the back of chairs, looking over at my mother who was at the other end of the table with a number people holding court happily, it would appear that all was well with my parents after all! Finally reaching the vacant chair, which Trevor pulled out so as to let me in to the space. I held onto the table and squared myself up steadying myself from the journey to their table; as I went to sit down, I just seemed to keep going. Unbeknownst to me Trevor had spied the previous owner of the seat coming off the dance floor and back toward the table, so as I went to sit down he moved the seat away from me and offered it back in the direction of the original owner. I just kept going, in my mind slowly it started to dawn on me that there was nothing there to stop me, then it all started to move in quick time – I speeded up, my natural reaction was to grab at the table in front of me, seizing the white table cloth in an iron like grip, it happened pretty quickly from there! As I crashed to the floor my grasp on the table cloth pulled over my head along came half the contents of the table - glasses, empty plates, knives and forks and the floral centre piece along with other detritus! The noise, even with the loud music playing was pretty spectacular. As the smashing stopped I heard an audible gasp. Momentarily I wanted to stay where I was. ‘Oh my God – is she alright? …  Get her out’..  Trevor and another man pulled me out by my arms and as quickly as I had gone down I was now being launched into the air at a spectacular speed. As my feet touched the floor and my eyes managed to re-focus, everyone in the close vicinity was staring at me. And as luck would have it the official wedding videographer was catching it all for prosperity! My mother was still sat at the table with her wine glass in hand. ‘Really Natalie!!? What are you thinking of – I will deal with this – Trevor take her home?’

Not needing to be asked twice Trevor grabbed my arm and we were at the nearest exit before I knew what was happening, he stopped to put his jacket on that he had grabbed from the back of his chair and we were off up the drive like rabbits being chased by a fox.

My mother stayed making, I assume profuse apologies for her daughter, enjoyed the aftermath of my performance. Not understanding how her daughter could make such a spectacle of herself! I wonder where I got that from?

The good news is the video of me still exists, sadly this marriage did not last long they divorced and she re-married someone else fairly shortly afterwards. My mother and Trevor were invited to the next wedding, I was not!

What can I tell you my mother loves a wedding!