It began like a John Hughes movie and ended like a train wreck. There are those who say that marriage is a great institution, if you are ready, that is, to be put in an institution. There are others who run from the merest mention of the word and others still who rush from their childhhod with heads full of romance to seek it out.

I stumbled into mine half man half boy. Actually it was more like a 60/30 split in favour of the boy.

It was pretty much just me and Eddie at that time. Eddie was a square peg, a fringe person, a strange mix of Swiss-German and Scottish with a love of driving, a certain Thai sauna in Turnpike Lane London and money. The pair of us rattled about together doing as close to nothing of interest as two young men could get without loosing the will to live.
Oh yeah, there were moments..meeting Triads in some dingy Irish pub in central London, swearing at celebrities, racing up and down the A127 wearing blue jumpers and fake traffic police hats in a hired car flashing our lights at other drivers and getting them to pull over before sticking two fingers up at them and racing away…moments, but they were few and far between. Mostly we just drifted.

One day Eddie was, as was normally the case, behind the wheel of his latest vehicle and I was, as normal, sitting beside him smoking and half listening to him as he rumbled on about this and that. “Fancy coming to a wedding?” he asked, it peaked my interest and I asked when it was. Ed explained that his best mate ‘Mike’ up in Dundee was away to get married and he was to be the best man. I snorted “What..hasn’t he got any other mates?” I think Ed replied with a dry “Fuck off” or something similar. I agreed that a trip to Dundee was certainly a good idea, and that i’d sort out the time off. I had recently finished with Cheryl, much to Ed’s joy. (He hated the girl with a passion.) and the trip would do me good.

And that was how it began. The Domino that was named Edward set me off towards the Domino that was to be my wife and mother of my two children.

Some time later, not much, but I don’t recall exactly how long, we set off on a 500 mile road trip to the fair city of Dundee. Ed drove it all. The journey was uneventful, and I remember nothing, not even the gloomy half-awake world of the motorway service stations we must have stopped at for fuel, cheap cd’s full of remixed sounds from a yesterday most people have forgotten and more cigarettes.
I do remember Eddie telling me of Mike’s sister..Stephanie, and how he’d always fancied her even when they were kids. He decided en-route that he was going to finally ask her out, and I, being the mildly supportive journey tired creature that I was, mumbled that he should “Go for it mate”. He was referring to my future wife.

I forget if it was light or dark, rainy or dry when we got there. I only recall the ‘greyness’ of it all. Dundee is Grey. Slate grey, flecked with the ocassional brilliant orange brick of newly built business parks waiting for businesses to park in them. Gray, and cold.
Eddies mum met us at the door, she was a tiny woman as I recall, with a very mousy way of moving..she oozed opression and subserviance and when I met his father I understood why. Eddie’s father was tall. Tall, trimmed, clipped, polished, combed, buffed and sterner than the sternest Teacher my mind could conjur up. He was Victorian and should have only been displayed in sepia tones.

Immediately I was concerned that agreeing to stay for free at Ed’s place had been a poor decision, and then on the back of that realization I realized that I was there for Eddie’s sake, not the sake of my wallet..staying at a cheap hotel had never been an option.
We were welcomed in by his mother and ‘watched’ in by his father and within a few short minutes Ed was being interrogated about his job, his savings, his weight…his very existence.
They wanted him to come home, and clearly it was an effort for him to say no, to dare to tell his father that he was doing fine and was just peachy down south a good five hundred miles away thankyou very much.
I was asked some low level questions, there was some frowning, a little more questioning and then I was allowed to go. I was not the kind of friend that Victorian Father wanted to see his only son knocking about with.

Someone should have told him “Accidents happen”.

To be continued…