Helen's Wedding Poem

At the weekend I went to the wedding of my good friend Helen, and yesterday I spent a lot of the day writing this poem:

Fire Poi

Helen is a lovely mate,

she taught me how to spin a plate,

and it was for me a total joy,

to learn to spin some fire poi,

the memory that might be best of all,

was of a polish festival,

where I enjoyed the chance to play,

with basket weaving and with clay,

the polish arts festival "Slot"

I even managed to get the chance,

to partake in medieval dance,

in return for this fun time,

I invited Helen to Palestine,

Helen was a total champ,

with Arab kids at summer camp,

next she moved to snowy Norway,

and she invited me to stay,

we weren't posh enough for skiing,

The example basket and our basket (on her head)

a two quid sledge is much more freeing,

on new years eve we stayed awake,

to build a fire on a frozen lake,

and we all lived to tell the tail,

although there's been some transport fails,

I don't want to lay the blame, 

but we really suck at catching planes.

Back in Liverpool for a bit,

She fell for a guy she thought was fit,

an artist and a literal clown,

she followed him to his home town.

Palestine

The week I passed my driving test,

I travelled down to the south west,

that's when Helen made me try,

something odd I don't know why,

for some reason I had to drive,

while trying to keep a fish alive,

the fish was in a big fish tank,

on her lap - she's such a crank,

there was an awful lot of splash,

but thankfully we didn't crash.

Back to that clown guy from before,

the frozen lake Norway

I'm sure you're egger to know more,

It didn't work out in the end,

but they remain the best of friends.

Don't worry I will soon be sending,

hints that there's a happy ending,

Graham arrived into her life,

and in the future she's his wife!

But before that had come to pass,

first dance

Graham showed that he had class,

by playing a song that truly shocks,

and singing along to the pub duke box,

"you and me baby ain't nothing but mammals,

so let's do it like they do on the discovery channel."

Spoiler alert it ended well,

their wedding dance was Tom Odell

everyone cried with tears of glee 

to see their dance "grow old with me"

a good first dance choice- well done,

Hen Ham Bug

 I'm relived it's not the mammal one,

and now they are a team of three,

with Graham's daughter Emily,

I want to give you all a hug

you are great "hen ham bug"

"Hen Ham bug" is the collective name they have for the three of them, and it was lovely to see Emily being such a big part in the wedding. There was a bit where the three of them all said vows to each other.

I traveled down to the wedding in a van with my good friend Josh and his partner Alex, me and Josh were student housemates and Helen and Josh together are pretty much responsible for me being a community artist. Josh does a load of impressive big scale arts projects that I'd love to tell you about but this blog isn't about him.

For this wedding Josh provided a small marquee, circus equipment and a giant piñata shaped like a cake. (Yes you may have guessed by now that he is the artist/clown from the poem.) The cake was filled with sweets and confetti. There was a no confetti rule in the venue but Josh was unaware of this, and Helen was unaware of the piñata being filled with confetti. This made for a manic search for a hoover afterwards.

The venue was a beautiful old barn that was really long, that was like a nice blank canvas they could do what they liked in. We arrived on the Thursday night and I stayed at Helen and Grahams house which was full of wedding stuff. They had hand made all these paper flowers from old books painted in copper and blue, and hung them with fake ivy and hessian around hula hoops. They had also painted a load of signs and they had made candelabras from copper pipping. 

One the Friday we set to work decorating the venue, I got to do monkey duty, climbing a ladder to hang the flower hoops from the old barn beams. It was a super hot day that day, a bit of a heat wave about 28 degrees, although nothing compared to Dan and the boys in France who bought a 3 meter by 2 meter paddling pool this weekend! Being up the ladder was tiring work but also the most fun job. Helen's family arrived and everyone worked hard to get the place looking great, we put the marquee up on the side of the barn and got some of the food stuff sorted.

On the day of the wedding the weather was unfortunately cold and wet, I think the hot weather on the day before made people dress more optimistically than they should. Helen and Graham had spent the night in a hotel and I was in their house with another girl called Hannah who I haven't seen for over a decade. She drove us over to the venue (which was a long way) we were having such an interesting intense chat about life that we missed the motorway junction and had to go a very long way round.

Me, Hannah, Cat, Helen, Will, Josh about 2006

Rach, Me, Helen, Hannah, Alex, Josh, Cat 2022

The structure of the day was different to most weddings. At most weddings couples pick a totally random time for a meal that they would never normally eat at like 4pm, and then the ceremony will be at 12 and no one will have eaten before then, so everyone will be hungry. But this wedding was the opposite, there was a constant stream of food! The day started with a buffet lunch which made it a lot more relaxed and no one noticed that me and Hannah weren't completely on time. They had two big long rows of tables and you could sit anywhere. Then we all moved our chairs to the front stage bit for the ceremony. They had already done the legal bit in a church before, so they could say what they wanted for this bit and they didn't have to go off and sign a register. Legal documents really have a way of bringing down the tone of a party. Right this minute I'm on hold to my car insurance to cancel it because I sold my car yesterday and to get them to send the no claim bonus through for our french insurer, if I was also hosting a party it would be a terrible one. but maybe we should always host parties every time we do a boring document just to make it less boring.

There was no formal time to sit down with speeches, we had canopies, then Pizza, then late night nachos and ice cream. Instead of a toast with Champaign, we had shots! There was a blackboard with a tally chart for what shot you wanted. A lot of people did not how to do a tally THE FITH LINE CROSSES THE OTHER 4 LINES if you can't remember that then you're too young or too drunk for more drinking. 

For music during the day it was sort of like a karaoke but in a good way. It was mainly their daughter Emily and a few of her friends singing and playing guitars but it was kind of unstructured and open to other people having a go.  Emily is really good at music even though she's apparently only been playing the guitar for 6 months. Later in the evening there was the first Dance and then the second and third and forth dance and then more dances. The DJ had cool lights and everyone got into it. I left at 10:30 because I'm a loser, but I still had to stay up till 1am because me and Hannah only had one key between us.

It was a beautiful day with some of my favourite people that I don't get to see a lot anymore, Thanks for having me Helen and Graham.