My Big Fat Motherwell Wedding

I've got a wedding this week. I'm sure it's going to be lovely but ever been to a nightmare wedding? Everyone has nightmare wedding stories. This is mine.

Meeester’s folks left Motherwell in the sixties when they got married, but the rest of the family still live there. Motherwell is well hard. In fact it should be called Motherwellhard.

It was 1995 and one of the cousins is getting wed. For some reason, the full extended Martini clan decided to attend this wedding.

It was a colourful day, to say the least.


The Bride

The Bride is tiny, brunette and pretty. We see her for the first time as she comes down the aisle.

Double take…there are five clones behind her in shiny aqua puffball dresses. Her five bridesmaids are clearly her sisters. They are exact copies of her except they range in size.

Her's is your typical East-End Glasgow Catholic family. Quite a few Glasgow Catholics still practice the no-contraception thing. I mean, even the Irish are ditching that one- there’s just South America, Africa and Glasgow making sure not a single spermatozoa is spilled.

Living proof of this practice is these six girls, all with barely nine months between them. The reason they all look exactly the same is because the poor mother’s body didn’t have time to reset and make a new template for the next kid as soon as the last one was out. It still thought it was making the last one.

Mother of the bride is probably only 33 but looks 70, and is probably expecting the next clone.

It gets Stephen King freakier when you see the sisters all lined up at the top table later on. They’re like Russian dolls, ‘cept in polyester, frosted lipstick and sovereign rings. They are named after dead nuns.


The Best Man
Cousin groom's best man is his elder brother. He is a known Motherwell hardman and has seen the inside of chokey on more than a few occasions. Meeester remembers him fondly as a cool older cousin. A cool older cousin who has morphed into a dangerous geezer involved in some dodgy rackets. What a difference a decade makes. His hard mates are around him throughout the day like he is some kind of Weegie Tony Soprano.


The Line Up

Oh! What to do in the line up? What’s that line in Four Weddings and a Funeral?

“I hate line-ups, I never know what to say”

“Just smile and say, ‘You must be very proud’.”

Good advice. Hugh and his posh pals might not have been so worried about social niceties in this line up situation. Their manners would be severely challenged if the best man were to grab their girlfriend bodily and effectively feel her up. On being introduced to the Best Man, my arse was squeezed and fondled and he grunted in my ear,

“C’mere darlin’”. Not that I could come any closer.

I’ve not been violated in a line up before or since.

Apart from the obvious embarrassment, I spent the next half hour worried that this faction of the family may yet accept their invitation to my own nuptials and I will be molested once again in my own line-up in a month's time.


The Wedding Feast

We’re in the Motherwell Miner’s Social Club for the reception; not featuring in Brides Magazine alongside Blenheim Palace any time soon. Staff come round for drinks orders and are immediately flummoxed by Meeester’s request,

Meeester: Which reds do you have?

Waiter: Eh?

Meeester: Red Wine? Is there a House Red?

Waiter: Hang on…(shouts the full length of the hall) Bernadette! Hiv we goat ony wine?”

Barmaid: Em, I dunno, there’s maybe a boattle in the back, Stevie.

Meeester is brought Co-Op Red Lambrusco, with dust on the bottle (must be vintage). I never knew there was such a thing. But there it was in all it’s sachharine sweet, pinky, fizzy 3% alc. £1.99 glory. Oz Clarke would have started a flippin’ riot.

All around us, it’s shorts, nips and pints. You can feel the disapproval of the guests at the uppity ways of the Martinis.

“ Wine? Wine? ….Fuckin’ poof. "


The Top Table

Meeester’s Mum has been asked to sing at the service, and to show their thanks, she is invited to sit at the top table with the Wedding Party.

There are about ten people she barely knows sat beside her. We look over and feel sorry for her.

We feel even sorrier for her when we realise that she is the only person at the top table not smoking. And I’m not talking lighting up after the meal; the full table all have fags on the go throughout the dinner. The Mother of the Bride has one wedged in her fingers as she holds her cutlery, king-ash threatening to sully her steak pie at every turn. Food is eaten in-between draws.



Meeester Gets a Dress Rehearsal
Meeester is the only one of the guests in a kilt.

He feels uneasy at first, since everyone else is in a suit. He feels more self-conscious when, after the dinner tables are cleared, the entire wedding party have gone and got changed into shirts and jeans, boob tubes and minge base skirts, like it was any other Saturday night at the Miner’s Social.

At one point the groom and best man go off with their mates to play pool in the other room!

As a result of this, drunken people at the club think Meeester’s the groom. All night he is being bought drinks by random strangers, and on several occasions he has to refuse money crushed into his hands as a wedding gift.

Red-faced broken veined certain heart attack victim: I didnae hae time to get you anything, but that’s for your honeymoon, son.

Meeester: Oh! I’m not the groom.

Heart attack: (Not hearing, or caring) You look aifter that wee lassie…she’s a fuckin’ diamond….

Heart attack drunkenly sways off…leaving Meeester clutching money.


As the night goes on, the reception turns into a drunken nightmare, with fights outside and sweating dipsomaniac uncles starting family arguments with other sweating dipsomaniac uncles.

Terrifyingly, more and more relatives I’ve never met start to make noises about organising mini buses and such to Aberdeen for our wedding.

Of course, they never came.

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The Tooth is Stranger than Fiction (sorry!)

 My glasses shoot off my face at today's headline

Last year I would visit our dentist, the Tooth Jockey, on a monthly basis. Sometimes more. I wrote about it all the time here, and I bored all my family and friends with my brace-face woes and snaggletooth sagas.  I was having orthodontic treatment and sometimes it didn't go so smoothly, so in some months I was sat in that waiting room every week. When you spend a lot of time in a place, particularly one with the ratio of golf magazines to women's magazines around 10-1 you busy yourself with people watching.

One thing was a constant source of interest-I always wondered what the score was with the dentist's wife working there all of a sudden. I couldn't work out what it was that she did. She seemed just to be chatting whilst the receptionists dealt with everything. Hmmmm...

It was interesting to watch. Had she pestered him into letting her work there? All of a sudden they practice offered new cosmetic treatments like Botox and the like. Was she behind this diversification? She certainly seemed a fan of the injectible poison. In one conversation with her as I paid for my orthodontic treatment she told me she was trying to get her husband to train in a procedure where threads could be inserted into your face and pulled up giving you a face lift. I had just had metal fitted to my teeth, I wasn't into the mood for a face lift, but she clearly saw me as a potential candidate. After that conversation I kept a wee bit of an eye on her. "There's a story there," I said to myself.

They seemed like an odd couple- him really quiet and unassuming, and his wife loud, brash, with a permanent tan and a lot of makeup. What was the score there? Why am I so nosy? Why aren't there better magazines in this waiting room?

Turns out my Miss Marple sense was a- tingling. Today my glasses shot off my head cartoon like when I read the local paper. "Wife sues husband in pay row!" screams one local paper. "Couple set aside differences in unfair-dismissal battle!" shouted another. Front page both of them, the trashier rag having a series of photos of those involved- the one of the Tooth Jockey and his business partner taken unawares on the street, the one of the wife posed for with full makeup. Hmmm, guess who called the papers, eh?

My mum is my on the spot reporter for the Misssives and phones me with a down the line broadcast not quite from the dentist's chair but close enough. She's actually at the dentist today and there were apparently photographers outside when she went in. As she sat in the waiting room the local radio news blared out with the dentist and his wife the lead story as receptionists looked awkward and dentists cowered in their consulting rooms avoiding the press.  It's all kicking off and she's like Jon Snow in the middle of the action except she's in a dentist waiting room and not downtown Cairo. (In saying that she will kill me for writing about this- she's got dentistry work ongoing).

And why wouldn't the press be interested? A couple who are still together and claim to be happily married took each other to court after the husband sacks wife? What the blazes?  It's like a Coen Brother's film. But there you have it. The truth really is better than a woman's magazine after all. 

I knew there was a story there! I knew it!

I am happy to report however that the scandal won't affect my teeth, but any plans I might have had for threads being inserted into my skull to cantilever my wrinkles heavenward might be scuppered.

Stop Press; Story picked up by Daily Mail and The Telegraph today. You read it here first folks!
 

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The Suburbs

Us Taylor Kids

I’m a just a small town girl. “Livin’ in a lonnnnley world” etc. But as all small town girls know- there is no midnight train going anywhere.  I lived in a village where the last bus from the nearest city left at 8.52pm, arriving comfortably back in suburban Nowheresville at 9.30pm, so as we country folk could be safely tucked into our beds well before the witching hour. No Satanic rituals for us! Oh no!

This effectively meant you had to make your own entertainment.  I suppose for a few village teens that manifested itself as unplanned pregnancy, petty crime and alcoholism but for us it took the shape of plain utter stupidity. Say anything you like about The Taylor Kids (as we were, and still are really) but we knew how to entertain ourselves. We had to. I have tons of stories about us Taylor kids, but a lot of them are kind of “You had to be there” type stories, and anyway one day I plan to write something a lot longer about us, probably centering around the year we spent in Brazil, where for long periods of time, and without school friends particularly nearby we really were each other’s only friends. There is a book in it for sure. Even if only three people read it. One thing you should maybe know about us is that we find nothing funnier than our own jokes. It’s not fair to  expect anyone else to.

Any book about the Taylor kids would certainly include the things our brother did to make us laugh. Last night I remembered one that when I messaged by siblings to remind them had my sister unable to go to sleep for laughing. It was how my brother, without fail, at 12.30 every Saturday afternoon would do his Grandstand Dance.

Kids of the eighties, please just take 30 seconds to remind yourself of the genius that is the opening titles of Grandstand with Des Lynam.

My brother had engineered a carefully choreographed dance the climax of which would be a swivel hipped pelvic movement right on the large timpani bong in the middle. Bong! And ending with a double pelvic thrust on the final "Duh!Duh!" bit. Ahhh.. I can see it now. I am laughing when I picture it- hahaha he’s got a quiff and is wearing a Fred Perry shirt, a 80s grey and green nylon mix cardigan and just his pants and some off white sports socks(probably). Wasn’t everyone’s brother rocking this look in 1984?   

Now, given it was 12.30 on a Saturday afternoon, chances are that my parents were in the house. Yet I never remember them witnessing it.  In fact, when I think of the whole list of things my brother did to entertain us, I never remember my parents being present. But they must have been. I can only conclude that they were hiding in the greenhouse wondering where it all went wrong, silently weeping in the kitchen over a cup of tea with a stiff brandy in it, were on the phone to a child psychologist or were just avoiding us for the years it took for us all to bugger off out of their nice house and get a life of our own.

I’m sorry if this post is a little bit “you had to be there” but I’m writing it for my brother and sister really. For their delight (my sister) and embarrassment (my brother, but who am I kidding he’s proud of his achievements). I’m also writing this to try and encourage my 39 year old brother to film himself re-enacting the Grandstand dance for our entertainment. C’mon son- get that cardigan on!

Whilst he’s making his mind up, now that he’s a mature and responsible member of society (ha!) with a wife that would like to maintain a degree of attractiveness towards, here are some of the things my brother did to have me and my sister crying with laughter without fail:

1.The Grandstand dance (bong! hahaha!)

2.Dressing up in pants (there’s those pants again) and my mother’s fox fur coat (her honeymoon “Going away outfit” no less)  and a studded belt, painted on eyeliner moustache and pretending to be Freddie Mercury with one of the fire irons as a microphone. I have a photo of him doing this whilst outside on the kitchen extension roof somewhere. If it kills me I will track it down.

3.Freaking out at the mere mention of Marc Almond’s name. To the point of hysteria. To really drive him insane take your copy of Smash Hits with Soft Cell on the cover and place over your face and say the words, “Ewan, I love you” softly and Almondly to him. Possibly up it a gear by trying to kiss him with Marc Almond still on your face. Seriously I’d still like to arrange for Marc Almond to appear at my brother’s fortieth birthday this year. Marc, if you’re free give us a call. It’ll be funny, mate, trust me. I'll by you a pint. But not the pint of legend, you mucky git.

4. Miming to West End Girls by the Pet Shop Boys as an unsmiling Neil Tennant when he was supposed to be filling the dishwasher whilst listening to the Top 40 countdown. My sister would be Chris Lowe but as the song went on Tennant would become increasingly more violent towards his bandmate, usually ending with him being kicked to death whilst lying on the floor. All with the same emotionless expression on his face and probably wearing a long black trench/wool coat of my Mums. (Mum, he was NEVER out of your wardrobe)

5. Filling his mouth with Alpen, milk  and a munched up carrot and then running out to the back garden and pretending to be violently and uncontrollably sick against dad’s garden shed. We would probably make him do this about 10 times before we got bored. I don’t know if my mum and dad ever figured out what the mess was beside the shed. It’s possible they thought the dog had worms or something. No, it was just your son. Sorry if you spent any unnecessary money at the vets getting Sula checked out. Note: If anyone ever need a vomiting man double for a play or film or something I can honestly say you won’t find anyone more realistic than my brother. He is something of an artist.

So us small town kids, we know how to have  a good time. This is a universally recognised fact. My current faves Arcade Fire knew this when they wrote their latest album The Suburbs. I’ve scanned those lyrics, I’ve found lots to relate to in them. Sadly dressing up in your mother’s clothes and miming to Queen isn’t in there; Win Butler and his brothers must have been doing something else.  I’d like to think they dropped some tracks that were about the stuff that really made them laugh that when explained to other folks got them strange looks.

Ah, you had to be there.

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Men-Speak to Me!

Off the back of my last post which you can read here, I've heard from a few guys that they've been uncomfortable with a sexist culture against women in their workplace. Maybe you've been invited to join in, maybe you've felt powerless in the face of bosses who expect all males to treat women in a disrespectful way. I want to hear from you.

I am currently writing an article on how a sexist culture affects men in the workplace. If you've a story get in touch.

Email me at gillianamartin(AT)hotmail(DOT)com.  I won't use anyone's real name or mention any details you are not comfortable with- I just want a flavour for general feeling on this area which i think is overlooked when sexism in the workplace is being discussed.

And please pass the link on to your male friends. Thanks!

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