Four Weddings and a Woe.

Back in the 1990s the British film industry made a trilogy of Brit Pack movies – Notting Hill, Love Actually, and Four Weddings and a Funeral. I didn’t see any of them at the time, but a few years ago I got hold of a copy of Love Actually and quite liked it, so when Notting Hill turned up in a charity shop I gave it a try. I lasted twenty minutes before my terminal boredom became almost literally terminal and I switched it off. Determined to see the exercise through, however, tonight I started watching the third offering, Four Weddings and a Funeral.

The first substantive scene showed a traditional church wedding, and you know what? I found the sight of a white-bedecked bride walking up the aisle on the arm of her father quite moving for some reason. I tried to work it out, but could only speculate that it might have had something to do with an event in May 2017 when one of the very few bright lights in my firmament went out, leaving the gloomy shadows in my world growing even more dominant and engendering an inexcusable sense of devastation.

Maybe that was it. I don’t know. But to continue…

Once the bride and groom were standing together and the ceremony began in earnest, the only thing which moved in me were the contents of my stomach reminding me – as though I needed any reminding – of the reason for my severe dislike of weddings. Normal service was thus restored.

When it got to the thirty minute mark and I still hadn’t found anything funny (it was, after all, billed as a ‘romantic comedy’ so I suppose I shouldn’t have expected to find anything funny, but ever the optimist you know…) I turned it off – for now. Maybe I’ll give it a second chance tomorrow or whenever my mood improves.

(My mood is somewhat subdued tonight courtesy of the corporate world in the guise of E.ON, my energy supplier. Not content with pestering me mercilessly with their attempt to bend me to their will, they even stoop to insulting my intelligence with claims which would only convince those boasting an IQ in single figures. Such is the way of things in a culture increasingly controlled by bureaucrats, the corporate world, and arguably the most inept government I think I’ve ever known.)