I was floundering and I knew it. I began to repeat myself but quite honestly it was totally understandable. I felt the room filled with family and friends beginning to close in upon me. For some reason, I focused on the single bead of sweat that started on my forehead and had trickled down and had now reached the tip of my nose. It hung there, gathering critical mass before launching itself into free fall, down onto my shaking hands that clung to my scrumpled notes.
Margaret sat to my right on the top table urgently tugged on my trouser leg and leaning towards me tried to whisper to me a way out of my verbal cul-de-sac. “Mention Nora (my mother) and Dave (my father).”
“Happy,” she said miming her words. I nodded – message received.
I kick-started the speech again “And of course Luke would like me to mention, on this momentous day, our wonderful parents, Dave and Dora…… excuse me, Nora, who would be so happy today” I went on ” as they never thought he’d ever find a woman.”
I smiled broadly. Nailed it.
Ouch! I’d just been kicked in the shin by Margaret.
Her face indicated more was needed so I swiftly continued ” …..as wonderful and good-natured as Sandra.” I think I got away with it. Luke looked encouragingly in my direction. He was, like I, totally unfamiliar with the stilted and rather humourless speech I was delivering but I had no choice.
I’d spent the previous week writing the speech, searching the internet and gathering lovely wholesome family childhood stories. What I reckoned I had enough gathered together was enough to make a humorous, intimate and informative ten-minute speech.
I had that self-same speech in my hands right now but it was useless to me. You see, in the last five minutes, I’d managed to misplace my reading glasses and the speech might as well be back at home for all the good it was to me now.
I glanced down and saw that a water stain had smudged the black ink of my useless speech, a mere blur of black to my poor eyes. The free-falling freedom seeking drop of water had come to a sorry end, much like my speech.
Post Script – I lost the glasses when handing over the bouquet of flowers to Sandra’s mother when she received more than she had bargained for. The glasses that had hung out of my shirt breast pocket attached themselves to the flowers in the handover exercise. C’mon it could happen to anyone, couldn’t it?
My new book Murder On Board is now available – see below:
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