Tabard or not tabard, that is the question!

Ok, well let’s do this like ripping off a plaster. I’ll get the nasty bit over with and then we can all have a nice lollipop and a smile…

I e-mailed ST to tell him about the phone call. He says he knows nothing about it, has apologised, agreed to send me a cheque for 3K by 15th September and is going to phone my parents to speak to them and apologise for everything.
He has apologised to me by e-mail and written an attachment for me to show my friends and my brother. He has also agreed that once I receive the cheque, we have then agreed the terms of the divorce so need not have any more contact at all until the formal proceedings in December.
Thank God. I think it’s actually all over. I’ve seen more decency from him in one e-mail than I have over the last 5 months. I’m not naive enough to think that it’s plain sailing from here on in but at least I won’t have to battle for my money any more, even if it is just a fraction of what I’m really owed.

So, onto the party. Well, where on earth do I start??????
Spent Friday night making the world’s biggest curry and took it up to the venue at lunchtime on the Saturday. My mum, dad and I then spent 4 hours putting up decorations, setting out the food and generally making the place look nice.
I thought about pursuing an alternative career in the circus as at one point I was standing on a box that was on top of a chair that was on top of a table, hanging e-bayed disco balls from the ceiling.
I actually was a “bannerhanger” too, like our fake girl group’s name, as I endeavoured to hang over 100 feet of banners, bunting and posters all over the place. I was covered in blu-tack and bits of fluff as it was a bit dusty in all the corners. I looked not unlike some sort of party planning ferret.
My best mate turned up after a couple of hours and had printed off some Hilda Ogden and Victor Meldrew posters for the ladies’ and gents’ toilets. She helped me blow up hundreds of balloons and set up the dodgy raffle in which one of the prizes was a full length girdle – always nice when displayed hanging off a fire extinguisher.
Mum dished out our “tabards” and I looked like a very hairy, fluffy dinner lady once I had tried mine on.
We put loads of fresh flowers on all the tables, put blue M&Ms in plastic bags marked “Viagra” in places all over the venue and pinned up hundreds of bus timetables, coach tour posters and National Express adverts for mum’s “bus pass party” theme.
The band came to set up too and started to play all sorts of things as we were setting up. My brother rocked up with tonnes of ice for all the beers and wine and put it all in giant buckets and my dad’s friend from the pub turned up to set up all the barrels.
I therefore ended up carving a giant Edam cheese, amongst piles of fake Viagra whilst my brother wrestled with more ice than a scene from Titanic and my mum and dad practised their jiving to the band.
I managed to sneak off at about five to go and get changed. My “Sheila’s wheels” dress had another outing although it’s a bit baggy at the moment so I pinned it all in with safety pins and hoped for the best.
My mate turned up at six to take us to the venue and we struggled with giant vats of cous cous and pasta salad round the country lanes to the venue. It was a bit like those random events in “Britain’s strongest man” where they have to drag kegs and barrels up a hill, except I was doing it in a pair of stilettos and a cocktail dress. I actually arrived with half a gallon of chilli salad dressing slopped all over my shoes and in the footwell of my mate’s car.
For some reason, my Dad was sitting in some strange car when we got there and it was only when he jumped out and yelled “How’s my beautiful niece?” that I realised it was actually my Dad’s identical twin. He gave me a massive hug as he hadn’t seen me since ST left and told me that ST must be mental to dump such a beautiful and glamorous young lady. (I don’t think he had clocked my shoe full of dressing at this point.)
We went into the hall and my mum, auntie and my dad were in there making some of the final preparations. We put lanterns all up the lane leading to the venue and pots of fresh flowers on the steps leading inside.
The food all smelt gorgeous and I was really excited by this point. My brother was knee deep in corks, having spent the last hour undoing hundreds of bottles of wine and his girlfriend was up to her eyes in more salads and cheese. (We still hadn’t managed to cut that ruddy ball of Edam – it was like trying to crack open a boulder)
People started to arrive fairly quickly and the place was soon packed out with almost everyone I knew in the world. Loads of people hadn’t seen me since the wedding though, especially relatives from fairly far away and there were a few awkward moments when I had to re-tell the story of ST over and over again.
I got loads of hugs and love though and for the first time in ages, I felt my confidence beginning to creep up again as I was whirled around, hugged and cosseted by all these people who had known me since I was a tiny little girl.
When it was time for the food, me and my best mate went into the kitchen and put on flouro-pink tabards and rollers in our hair.
We then set up the pots of food and stood behind the tables ready to dish up. I was therefore dressed in a bright pink cocktail dress, a tabard, rollers and slopping steaming hot chilli and curry into bowls for lots of drunken people.
Everyone loved our outfits and we even got my dads’ golf mate in a tabard and roller, helping us out as it was chaos trying to serve up.
My Dad’s mate Neville scuppered our system too as he decided to go the wrong way down the buffet table whilst balancing what looked like almost a kilogram of pate on a plastic plate – never a good move; in fact, I’m not sure that the grease stain will ever come out of my mum’s friend’s stretch evening pants.
Following the buffet, the band started up. They were absolutely excellent; in fact, my mum’s friend who’s the lead singer used to play in a band alongside the Beatles in the cavern in Liverpool in the sixties. He belted out all sorts of Motown hits as well as some Cliff for the oldies and some rock and roll. I was up to my eyes in washing up by this point – thank god for tabards! However, I did come dancing out of the kitchen wearing my roller, tabard and rubber gloves to do a quick shimmy to “Crocodile Rock”. (Always a winner, rubber gloves, a tabard and the Elton John back catalogue.)
It all went a bit wrong when they played “500 miles”, a cover of the song by the proclaimers. For some reason, my mum decided to start a conga and I was dragged into it by my mum’s 70 year old neighbour, just as I was about to strip off the rubber gloves and start preparing the tickets for the raffle. This meant I was conga-ing around the venue with over 100 other people whilst dressed as a dinner lady, wearing rubber gloves and waving a book of raffle tickets. The conga went all around the whole venue, out into the car park, around the gardens and back in again. It didn’t get much better when they played “Amarillo” and me and my dad and his twin did the whole “Peter Kaye” thing with me being held up in the air by those two clowns whilst still wearing my full dinner lady regalia. My entire family were “Amarillo-ing” around the venue, including my mum who seemed to have had a nasty collision with quite a few glasses of “vino collapso” and who was all cleavage and inappropriate dancing for a batwing top.
I managed to rid myself of my nylon “cleaning- lady chic” and started to dismantle some of the tables to increase the dancefloor (It was all getting a bit heated and very squashed on there – the band’s version of “Brown Sugar” nearly ended up with a dislocated hip, a slipped disc and a divorce amongst the revellers.)
I ended up almost slow dancing with the table as I couldn’t manoeuvre it through the hordes of people so ended up pretending it was in fact my dance partner and so waltzed with it for a bit until I announced I was off to dump my table and have a fling with a stackable chair.
It was the raffle next which was a roaring success. The guests loved the “pensioners’ prizes” and everyone wore them so people were wandering around in joke false teeth, hair nets, girdles, tena lady pads poking out of their waistbands and plastic rainhats on bald men. It was a scream, especially when this 6’5” guy put on the girdle and shoved two balloons down the front of it before dancing to a medley of the Eagles greatest hits.
Then came a moment that was truly hideous…
My mate and I were called up to the stage to sing with the band. Now, if I had actually sung then I can assure you that everyone would have been in A&E with perforated eardrums. However, my mate is an excellent singer and so I had to think of something fast. So, I decided to ham it up completely and act like a complete div. We had to sing “Mamma Mia” and “Dancing queen” and I acted just like a cross between Julie Walters in the screen version of “Mamma Mia” crossed with an X-factor reject. I was sliding across the floor on my knees, doing farcical suggestive moves with the mike, deliberately getting the words wrong, dancing off the beat and generally acting like a complete loon. Everyone had tears running down their face and my mum was in complete hysterics. I announced over the mike that I was available for any forthcoming weddings, Bar Mitzvahs or wakes and that I was planning on a solo in church at my brother’s wedding. I got a standing ovation and my mum was almost in need of the tena lady for a good few minutes afterwards. My brother accused me of “stealing his thunder” as he was meant to be compeering but I kept getting cheered back on.
It was so lovely to feel like I could be me again. I had spent so long trying to be little Mrs Perfect for ST (who I knew would have died if he’d seen me in either the tabard or dancing on the stage). My mate was howling with laughter as she said it was our fake girl group “Banngerhanger’s” debut performance and everyone had loads of video and pictures of us acting like complete divs.
The party didn’t finish until the early hours and ended up with 6 of us crammed into the back of my auntie’s Volvo with me complaining I thought I was developing a dowager’s hump from leaning over a dinner table all night and now being wedged with my head up against a car roof and that ruddy ball of edam between my thighs. My mum lost it when I started singing “My hump” and putting the Edam down the back of my tabard – she’s easily amused.
I crawled into bed at about 3am and my mate stayed in the spare room. I was absolutely exhausted but couldn’t sleep as my head was still buzzing from the party.
However, I eventually went to sleep and decided that a tabard over pyjamas is definitely the way forward.
The next day, we went to the venue to clear up and that was when we discovered that somehow we had wrecked a radiator as it was completely squashed; we think it was when my dad’s skittles mate and his rather large wife took a bit of a tumble in the middle of a rather strenuous “Living Doll” but we can’t be sure.
Anyway, despite the beer having lifted all the laminate off the floor of one corner near the barrels, the dented radiator and a corkscrew that was lodged in the lock of the ladies’ toilet it was a fairly easy clean up. However, I was just in my tabard (I quite like that thing) and laughing along with my Dad about something when my phone rang. That’s when I got that horrible phone call of our “best man”. Swine.
It ended with my mum in tears because I was so shocked and my dad storming off in the car to the recycling tip because he was so angry but didn’t want to see me see him upset. It all rather put a dampner on things so I just finished up, went home and had a good sob. My mates couldn’t believe it and my brother was all ready for going round there to “sort him out” (although quite what he would have done with almost a foot difference in height I’m not sure. Maybe my bro was going to give him a few nasty kicks in the ankle)
I was fine after a while though and TB came round later and took me out for a lovely dinner so all was well in the world.
I still have one problem though. It’s not ST or our “best man”. It’s actually the question, “What on earth am I going to do with an entire ball of Edam and a fluoro tabard?”

Lots of love to you all

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