The wedding, the passengers, the umbrella, the races, the Duporth, the suit, the shoes, the tray of champagne and the love is a sequence of events a bit like it was written by Quentin Tarantino.
Scene 1: Get home from work on a tight schedule to gather up old mate and take her to a wedding. Of course she isn’t there, she’s at the dump. Nothing can interfere with Saturday at the tip’s recycling plant. There is a note on the bench to tell me that and that we are giving some young friends a lift to the wedding that is on in just under an hour. Old mate gets home from the dump in no apparent hurry, but still gets ready before me.
Scene 2: The umbrella. I rush out to the car and rearrange the back seat, pushing a bag onto the floor and my golf umbrella into the corner. Pick up the friends, get to the wedding service on time.
Scene 3: Old mate decides to go home in between the service and the reception. I volunteer quietly to go with her but get told to stay with the friends. Awesome – Duporth schooners and horse racing.
Scene 4: The umbrella. Pretending not to be excited, I offer to go get the car, as it is parked about a kilometre away, but as soon as I’m out of sight I’m keen to get to the pub, so much so that I jump in and spear myself in the bum with the umbrella (that had moved), and rip the whole backside out of my suit pants and leave a nasty scar that now compliments my face, so now have a bum that looks like my face. But far worse than the injury, I now have to go home as well.
Scene 5: The shoe. When I pull up, old mate is surprised to get the passenger door open but quick to tell me she has just broken her shoe, so we compare notes and injuries on the way home. Her shoes had come from the dump and I ask if maybe that is why they were there.
Scene 6: Finally, the wedding. The waiter drops a full tray of bubbling champagne right in front of me. I’m thinking the drama is over until old mate tells me her shoes are broken, again, this time looking like Beppo The Clown’s flapping numbers. Dump shop?
Thanks to alcohol, things do get better, apart from my bum and a limping other half.
