Sam Binnie - The Wedding Diaries

Maybe Thom’s been hoarding all our money for his flight to Mexico when they all finally get too much. Maybe not.

December 10th

Alice and I enjoyed a – cough cough – extended lunch hour today, starting on our Christmas shopping. We’d elbowed our way into Liberty to admire the beautiful homeware rooms, when Alice spotted a sign, nudging me: ‘Wedding Lists available here’.

Me: [sighing] Oh, Alice.

Alice: Uh-oh. Don’t ‘Oh, Alice’ me. I think this was an error.

Me: I didn’t even want a wedding list before, but just think…

Alice: I am thinking. I’m thinking that if your fiancé finds out I’m to blame for you wanting your wedding list at Liberty, I won’t even be allowed at your wedding. And that will make me so sad. [pulls exaggerated sad face]

Me: [laughing] Alright, alright, I surrender. But a wedding list does seem like bloody good fun, doesn’t it?

Alice: I’m not sure I like that look in your eye, young Kiki.

I promised I wouldn’t do anything to get her banned from our wedding. She looked sceptical. How many other things have I not even thought about yet?

December 11th

Tonight was Thom’s work Christmas dinner. Every year they hire out one of the huge banqueting halls in a London hotel, invite everyone in the company, from the big cheeses to the secretaries, give everyone a plus one and access to an open bar, and let mayhem commence. We were on a table of twelve, and although officially I was seated next to one of Thom’s colleagues, he had swapped places to talk shop on the other side. Instead, I was next to his wife, Della – of a month, she insisted on telling me – while Thom chatted to the woman on his other side. Despite my best efforts, my eyes were drawn inexorably down to her hand, which waited, fingers tapping, to show the enormous ring. She laughed when she saw me looking at it, saying, ‘It’s subtle, isn’t it? Well, I thought I certainly deserved a reward.’ I thought: maybe I’m being unfair. Maybe she gave her husband a kidney. I’d want a giant piece of jewellery if I gave Thom one of my vital organs. Although maybe I’d want it shaped like that organ: a lung-shaped pendant. A liver-shaped brooch.

Della: We both work so hard that I thought it would be nice to have something to show for it, you know? We’re working over eighty-hour weeks, we bought our first place together before the wedding, and I knew a year ago that I wouldn’t just want some tiny little thing [flaps hand as if it’s almost too heavy to lift] for the rest of my life. D’you know what I mean?

Me: [trying to laugh] I do, actually! [lifts up hand]

Della: [looks mortified] God, Kiki, I’m so sorry. I’m really sorry. That’s a beautiful ring, anyway. Was it one in the family he had to use?

Me: No, Thom chose it for me. It is an antique, though.

Della: [putting her head on one side] Oh, well, well done you. Flying the flag for anti-consumerism.

Me: [taking a deep breath] Della. What do you do?

Della: Oh, I’m in the City. I’m a compliance consultant.

She saw my baffled/uninterested face, and proceeded to describe her job to me, but I tuned out after a while. Here are the highlights:

It’s mainly about managing client relationships [I start wondering how many strip joints she’s had to take those clients to] and ensuring their prime point of contact … blah blah blah … promotion of services within assigned accounts … blah blah … winning engagements … increased fee incomes … blah blah … supporting a new business direction … blah … allocation of resources for productivity levels … Ten minutes later I’d necked four glasses of wine and she stopped pitching to me, and switched gears to talking about how terrible it was that people were clamouring for any kind of financial regulations, and criticising bankers was a dreadful bore and utterly self-defeating. I suddenly felt very drunk.

Me: How exactly is it self-defeating?

Della: Well, all the banks will just up sticks and go to Dubai, or Singapore.

Me: And is that a problem?

Della: Well, the banks pay billions of pounds of tax every year, don’t they?

Me: But do they pay all the tax they should? Do they make our country’s life better?

Della: [scoffing a little] Yes, they employ thousands of people. Not everyone is a senior executive, you know.

Me: Of course, that’s true. So why do senior executives get so much?

Della: Because they all work so bloody hard.

Me: But what is that work? What do they do? Why couldn’t other people do it? Hasn’t there been a study to show traders are no better at trading than a rolled dice? What do they add ?

Della: Oh, Kiki, that’s a bit of a socialist, naïve view of things. We can’t just run the country on nurses and teachers, you know?

Me: Can’t we? Can’t we? What’s the intrinsic worth of the City jobs? What do they do for us? If the company set up just to employ those people didn’t exist, who would employ them? It’s like ouro … orrob … oroboro … shit. Maybe not that. But their employable skills are in an incredibly narrow band, aren’t they? [trying to hold up fingers close together, to indicate narrowness] They don’t make tables, do they, or build houses? [I’m faintly aware of Thom tapping my arm] Do they? Or do you? Does your bank build a house? [Thom drags my chair away, with me on it, and swaps it with his, leaving me next to a smart looking woman in her forties]

New lady: She’s bloody awful, isn’t she? I had to sit next to her last year, and she spent two hours telling me that public sector teachers are a drain on the country.

Me: [sobering up] Sorry, I’m Kiki.

New lady: Liz.

Me: What do you do, Liz?

New lady: I’m a teacher.

After that, I had a gay old time, sitting with Liz and chatting about our work and families. But I felt Della and her husband glare scornfully at me for the rest of the night, before Thom got me home and gave me quite the talking-to.

If that’s what you want to call it.

December 15th

Bad days. Tony invited me into his office today just to remind me how much we’d spent on Jacki’s book, how much that represented of our annual budget, how much space our Sales team had had to beg for in the supermarkets, and how, basically, the first book I’d ever officially been given for Polka Dot would be the deciding factor in whether any of us got a bonus this year. ‘So you’d better make sure this Perfect Wedding is pretty perfect, yes?’ If I didn’t think that thought about four hundred times a day anyway, I would have brought it to Tony’s attention that no one at Polka Dot had received a bonus in the four years I’d been working there. But thank you for the added pressure. I sulked back to my desk and tried to go over the publicity plan with Alice.

Then his mother arrived.

I could hear her coming from the other side of the building, clattering up the stairwell, banging her oversized golf umbrella against everyone and everything she could, calling out, ‘Anthony! Anthony! ’ like her forty-seven-year-old son was a runaway pup. She knew exactly where he’d be, and eventually made her way into his office after knocking piles of books over and pushing paper off any surface she could reach. The door slammed, but we could still make out every word she barked at him.

Pamela: Anthony, what the devil is this I hear about a bloody wedding book? What kind of trash is this?

Aha.

Tony opened his office door.

Tony: [nervously] Kiki! Would you mind stepping into my office for a moment?

Pamela, apparently, is disgusted that we’re publishing the book of a soap actress , convinced that we’re essentially becoming Heat magazine because we’ve got a celebrity telling us her wedding plans. I’m unsure what the difference is between this book and any of the other celebrity stuff we’ve done in the past – could it be that people may actually have heard of this celebrity? – but Tony had told his mother that I’d bought this book, that he hadn’t been happy about this but I’d argued him round and it was on my head. Pamela looked me up and down and gave a snort.