This is a wedding speech I never gave...

This is a wedding speech I never gave. Don’t worry, everything is fine: the wedding was great as is the marriage. The wedding was in Luxembourg, back in the summer and was of my most excellent friends Tom and Adrienne.

About three months before the day Tom asked me if I would give a speech. I said yes, it would be my pleasure (or something), and then it was never mentioned again. I assumed Tom had forgotten or changed his mind during the organisational maelstrom that I understand surrounds these things, but I didn’t worry.

Later on though, with a week or so to go, it occurred to me maybe he hadn’t forgotten, and maybe he was expecting to be stirred by my Churchillian oration. With the benefit of hindsight I should probably have just asked him, but to do so seemed somehow weird. If he’d forgotten asking me altogether it might come across as a little needy and solipsistic asking out of the blue if I could do a speech at their wedding. Besides, I wasn’t best man and didn’t see an obvious reason for me giving a speech.

If Tom was a more devious person or if I were a more suspicious and cynical man I might have thought he was lining me up as a spare in case Subash (best man) threw in the towel or got caught smuggling diamonds at customs, but I’m almost completely sure Tom wouldn’t do that. Maybe I’d dreamed him asking.

All this said, the thought of suddenly being called on the day and being caught with my oratorical pants around my ankles wasn’t a palatable one and so on balance I thought I’d better prepare a few words in case of emergency. How many words? Tom hadn’t given me any indication of how long a speech he wanted, and again it felt sort of rude to ask. Did he have in mind a quick ting-ting and “M’lords ladied and gentlemen, the bride and groom” or a day-long Cicero rant on the eternal folly of man? In the end I concocted a two stage affair, the first half complete within itself, about four-five minutes, depending on panic levels, and then another 3-4 minutes to tag on if he was expecting longer.

As it turns out, I never had to give the speech for one reason or another (I did get to give what seemed like a lengthy a bible reading which I only got on the way to the lectern, but that’s alright, I’ve been reading and talking since I was little) which is a shame because it was pretty inspiring. Or awful, depending on whether those listening would have bought in or not.

It’s worth adding a bit of context and I should explain that Tom is of Sierra Leonian stock, but now a British citizen and Adrienne is Dutch and also settled in Britain. Her parents live in Luxembourg, hence the, you know, Luxembourg, and the audience was a mixture of British, Dutch and Sierra Leonian. Also the wedding took place a few days after the Brexit referendum in Britain. All of this I felt was too big to ignore and so I tried to weave it all in. The theme of the first half was “international relations” and I was confident would be at least acceptable. The second half should it have been needed was my “what it means to be a human being” speech and could have gone either way, to be honest.

Anyway, here it is:

“Good evening everyone, my name is Adrian. I’m a colleague of Tom’s and I’m also lucky enough to call Tom and Adrienne my friends.

Now, before I say anything, I must add my thanks and appreciation for a most excellent day. I know an awful lot of work has gone into making everything perfect, and my God you’ve succeeded, so a hearty thumbs up to all concerned. “

[presumptuous, I know, I was prepared to tone this down if everything had been ghastly, but actually it really was a beautiful day]

“And thanks also for the invitation. A wedding invitation isn’t a thing I take lightly. It’s one of the great milestones of life and that you would want to share it with me and everyone here and even let us borrow a small piece of your happiness is a huge privilege, and one I very much appreciate.

And Luxembourg of course. So beautiful, what a magnificently expensive place. It’s one of those destinations that elevates you when you tell people your plans, it’s like going to Geneva or The Hague, everyone assumes you’re attending a summit or you’ve been made president of somewhere. Or a war criminal, I suppose.

Yes, international relations. Something we’ve been concerning ourselves with a lot in Britain (Brexit. Sorry about that, everyone) but as I see it we have a sort of triangle going on here between the Dutch, the Sierra Leonians and the British.

Now, the history of the British in Sierra Leone is at best patchy. We were instrumental in setting up Freetown in the 18th century, initially as a haven for freed slaves who had been good enough to lend us a hand in the American War Of Independence. Then, to prove we learned nothing in America we levied tax on the rest of the country outside of Freetown without offering anything in return which served to generate the complex and divisive politics that has haunted Sierra Leone down the centuries. So. Black mark there.

The British of course also have a history with the Dutch. Many nations have invaded Britain over the centuries, but, hailed all over the world for their calm, open, civilised sensibilities, only The Dutch have invaded twice. In 1667 Dutch ships sailed straight up the middle of the Thames and blasted everything they could lay a cannonball on to smithereens. The entire British Fleet was destroyed along with the Royal Docks at Chatham, the whole country was brought to its knees by one massive kick in the testicles.

The second invasion in 1688 was our own fault, really. It’s a wonderful thing being a united kingdom, at least for the moment, but we do run into trouble when anyone called James gets on the throne, and in 1688 we had one: James VII of Scotland, II of England and II of Ireland, but a different sort of 2nd than he was to England. Well no one is going to stand for that, the stationery alone must have been too much to cope with, so when William of Orange landed, he got the job, and we were invaded again, if a little  more quietly.

But that’s all water under the bridge.

Several bridges.

All blown up by dutch cannon.

The third side of this triangle links the Sierra Leonians with The Dutch, as we are doing here, in our own small way. As far as I know there is no history of epic military events or political strife between the Dutch peoples and those of Sierra Leone. None at all. And so my message here to take home with you is: let’s keep it that way.”

[This is the point at which I could have bailed out either for reasons of time or if I was facing a three language chant of “Off! Off! Off!” or similar]

“I mentioned Brexit, as we’re talking of international relations. I don’t know if you’ve followed the ins and outs of the arguments in the UK, but it seems to me we made an error, and the reasons we made that error are relevant to us here, today.

I hear the phrase “post truth”. It’s a sinister phrase and it represents the logical conclusion of the techniques of emotional manipulation developed for the advertising industry being adopted for political use, ways of bypassing our reasoning faculties to directly and involountarily affect our opinions of things. Whether we’re being sold washing powder or right wing politics, this stuff is inescapable, we’re being tricked into accepting things irrespective of their truth. Why am I going on about this, I said it was relevant didn’t I?  I’m sure I must have meant it.

Well, the psychology that’s being targeted is the best and most beautiful part of being human, our ability to believe, and to tamper with that, to manipulate belief for gain cheapens it. It’s cynical.

Belief, to be able to believe things, is important.

Because what we believe defines us as individuals, and believing in things is what makes us human, and there are some things you have to believe in and it doesn’t matter if they’re true or not. They exist because we believe in them.

You have to believe in love.

You have to believe in happiness.

You have to believe in the basic goodness of humanity

You have to believe that tomorrow can be better than today

Who knows what all this means, but  it’s the beauty and magic of being human, it’s why life is worth living, and this is why we’re here to celebrate it.

Now, anyone who knows me will be expecting me to finish with celebratory gunfire, but, we live in uncertain times and thus I’ll make do with a toast, so, in the name of all the gods that bless these things,  raise a glass with me to the bride and groom and our souls will be the richer for it.”

Diplocks Yard

 Standing at the cliff edge on the path of economic entropy

It is in the nature of our society that everything is for sale, everything has its price. Through its life a thing may be bought and sold many times, its value depending to some extent on its perceived innate worth, derived for instance from other, comparable transactions but also on the skill of the seller and the degree of desire in the buyer. This value occasionally increases with time, but more usually the reverse is true; most things decay in some way, becoming less useful or perhaps even just less attractive to the eye. Human relationships may be viewed from a similar standpoint, the currency being (usually) different, but the concept of value that it represents remains the same.

It follows that, given enough time, everything and everyone, will reach the end of their useful life, when they are no longer wanted and their value reaches zero. It is at this point as a

society we tend to demonstrate a lack of sentiment, as we remove the things (or people) in question from our existence. They are eventually (depending on circumstance) buried in landfill to trouble archaeologists, or incinerated to trouble climatologists, or just deleted from our address books lest they trouble our consciences. There are places though on the event horizon of this eventual fate, last chance saloons right on the transition point of doom where jetsam might just be fished out before it becomes economic flotsam if just the right eyes fall on it at just the right time. In East Sussex, this is Diplocks Yard.

When a thing has drained through every level of Sussex consumerism, passed through every grade of mercantile filter, the cogs of commerce turning just a fraction of a radian more each time, until there is not a drop more profit or utility to be wrung fom it, then Diplocks yard is where it will wait a while, on a trestle table, or in a broken cabinet for final judgement. Perhaps one more person will need a remote control for a cathode ray Sony Trinitron and perhaps this is the day he (probably he) will wander in. In all probability though, this is the penultimate resting place for the truly unwanted, the genuinely worthless. I don’t know if there is a geographic human equivalent. Hastings, possibly.

If you do find yourself in the belly of Brighton, strung out on single origin coffee or brought low on micro-brewery beer, if there’s nothing left in the tank and the rest of the day will be rolling along without you, then make your way to Diplocks and as an object in the universe you will find your kin. Not that there was much in the tank to begin with for most of this - one must be optimistic - merchandise. Nothing here was ever destined to be an heirloom, this was everyday ephemera, not built to last. You will find no antiques. There are books here that will never again be looked at, piled near yellowed pictures that will never find another wall or ones that, given their content, surprise you that they ever did.

This seems a hopeless place, from the weathering of a wine rack that could only have occurred in a skip or woodpile to the mounted boars heads that only a madman could love, there is little here that even makes so interesting a corpse as to engender the desire to know its story. Who cares what

optimistically misjudged hand picked out these chintz lampshades all those years ago, or what sartorial agonies of indecision were played out before those bland coffins of wardrobes, the wood stained dark to hide, well, the wood.

And yet, Diplocks prevails. Those plastic clocks without faces, cheap,

homeless chessmen, dead men’s suits and awful crockery have regularly seen off challenges from men in suits sporting shoes with little chains who would much rather the few yards of painted wood frontage on North Road was taken away (presumably to stand in a similar yard somewhere) and replaced with glass behind whose gleaming darkness business people would sit and wonder (times being what they are for businesses) why their services remain unused, like a bamboo magazine holder that no one wants.

But then, perhaps I’m hasty with the word hopeless: That wine rack? Worth three quid of anyone’s money and now it's in my kitchen. Who knows, perhaps there’s always hope given enough time and a bit of luck.

AA