Wedding preparations (From Gazette & Herald)

Wedding preparations

I AM sharing my computer with daughter Bryony this week, as she and her husband are at home to help with the preparation of her sister Joanna's wedding. Bryony is also pulling together some of her presentation work for a professional exam, so my desk is sharing information from the farming world on treating worms in sheep and from the medical world on sexually-transmitted viral infections in humans. I can't differentiate between the awfulness of the illustrations.

Granddaughter Jessica is adding to the general chaos of the preparations in her own delightful way. She considers a room bare without a floor full of toys, the odd smear of chocolate and a pile of ripped-up papers. For breakfast (whilst her mum and dad slept) I had the remains of a bowl of Coco-pops, half a sausage, a piece of stilton, fromage frais, toast with cheese spread and toast with chocolate spread, washed down with strawberry milk shake. Will I fit in my wedding outfit I wonder? Will Jessica?

She is very happy in the farmhouse, toddling from room to room with a cheery "eyo" to everyone. That and "ereyare" are the sum of her distinguishable vocabulary, but there is a non-stop stream of babble from her on everything that passes through her very active little brain.

Harvest is underway outside, and son-in-law Chris was very happy for the respite offered by a tractor cab, to ferry the barley back home from the field. Only one gateway was slightly adjusted in width and Chris is certainly far more proficient at backing the trailer into the barn and tipping up the grain than I am. John was a very happy farmer last night as the barley had yielded well and, as he lay in bed after his bath, he took a phone call to sell all the straw at a good price; which solves the problem off how he was going to get baled up before the wedding.

Our porch is heavily scented with roses. Jo wants real petals to be thrown instead of confetti and, being Jo, they have to be of a specific hue to match the colour theme of the wedding. You can buy freeze-dried rose petals, but they are an extortionate price. Jo's friend Helen has made cones for her of paper printed with the music of the Wedding March, and these are to be filled with rose petals and left at the church. Or that is the theory. We shall see on Saturday how it all works out. As it is, not only have I got a fragrant porch, I have also got hundreds of little beetles that lived in the roses until they were unceremoniously rendered homeless by the shredding of the rose blooms.

Other farm inhabitants being rehoused this afternoon will be the bulls. Currently, their yard is next to the barn that is holding the marquee for the wedding reception. Intrigued by the banging and crashing of the team of men putting up the frame of the marquee yesterday afternoon, two bulls decided to jump over their gate, and join them. John, who was in the next yard checking out the combine, heard the shouts of alarm from the men and ran into the yard to sort matters out. Luckily, the team were quite level-headed and obeyed John's instructions to stand still and not wave their hands about. Or any bits of the marquee. The bulls might think they were at a bullfight. John slipped behind the bulls, opened up their gate and walked them back in. Their new yard is well out of the way of the marquee.

Beef is on the menu at the reception, but not on the hoof.

Updated: 11:31 Wednesday, July 23, 2003