Where's the Groom

. . . or, What to Do When Your Secret Husband Dies Five Days Before the Wedding Celebration.

Very uncharted territory, this. You generally know the form when people get married, or someone dies, or is fired, or wins the World Cup. You shake hands, you hug, you go for a beer, you go for a beer. But a secret husband popping his clogs five days before the wedding breakfast? With people coming in from all over the place? And what on earth do you do about a present?

The reports from South Africa just kept gettting worse - my cousin Mark was not responding well to his chemotherapy. He had a stroke, and died. Li'l Sis and I flew out as planned, trotted along to the venue at the appointed time, and the whole thing went ahead exactly as planned. Except no groom. Not an inch of black to be seen, a breezy disco track for muzak, and a bride in all her finery. The speeches delivered by grown men who cried - not a bad tribute either.

Li'l Sis and I were seated with Mark's sons, both splendid young men just starting their legal careers, both articulate, beautifully-mannered and charming.

Later that evening we dined with Mark's sister, who filled us in on the relationship between the family and the bride, including the name-calling, the crockery-chucking, and the bride throwing her out of her house, yelling '... and Mark didn't leave his sons anything! I inherit it ALL!' Apparently on the grounds that they would just drink any money. Oh - and the secret wedding, four months before.

Unsurprisingly, Mark was only monied because, having been sunk deep into debt by child support payment for wife #1, and the extravagances of wife #2, it was wife #3 who pushed him into a better job, managed his finances and used her own money to help pay off his debts. She, however, proved faithless, leaving the way open for wife #4 to scoop the lot.

When I spoke to my mother about the disinheriting of the two extremely well-presented sons, she rather shocked me by agreeing with the opinion of the shrewish widow, and saying that this opinion was held by the majority of the older members of the family.

I swear, the reason we love all our family as much as we do, is that we live several thousand miles away. How on earth else can you do it?

But I didn't go all that way to come back empty-handed. Here's a couple of pictures for you - the first one in the best PUH-ssible taste. Hung in a jeweller's shop, I cannot honestly remember the last time I saw anything so crass.

And the second one hung outside a mall-cum-casino, all tricked out to look like a small corner of Venice, with fake houses, real restaurants, acres of real one-armed bandits, and a 'sky' painted to look like late afternoon - wait a minute, I've a picture somewhere -

(Li'l Sis said it reminded her of Las Vegas, only not so classy.) The sign outside said


I did have to stop and breathe quite deeply when I saw that one. I wondered what would happen if the opposite notice was hung inside - ' You are now entering a gun-ridden area - Gun safes are openly derided. Stick-ups will be carried out'. I think I'd still be inside.